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Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

nianticlabs.com

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Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#181

Post by eru »

thephyber wrote: post #123
relyks wrote: post #20

This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's…

All companies should be truthful, forthcoming, and specific about how they will use your data, but… If you enjoy the game, play the game. Don’t boycott/withhold because they figured out an additional use for data that didn’t previously exist. Another way of viewing this: GoogleMaps is incredibly high quality mapping software with lots of extra features. It is mostly free (for the end user). If no one uses it, Google…

> All companies should be truthful, forthcoming, and specific about how they will use your data, but…

I'm fairly sure, if you read the terms-and-conditions, it probably said that the company owns this data and can do what they want with it.

> There’s no reason to hold out for a company to pay you for your geolocation data because none of them offer that service.

Well, it can make perfect sense (to some people) to hold out forever in that case.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#182

Post by eru »

JohnMakin wrote: post #166
phendrenad2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you really tricked? Hard to believe that someone on Hacker News saw Pokemon Go and didn't immediately think of the data collection possibilities.

It may surprise you to learn pokemon go is nearly a 10 year old game based on 40 year old beloved IP that when it was released did not exist in the same data hellscape we do today, and even if it did, the attraction of the IP would overrule people thinking about this kind of thing. These kinds of comments are extraordinarily disingenuous sounding, particularly when anyone can spend 3 seconds and figure out their prim…

> [...] when it was released did not exist in the same data hellscape we do today [...]

That was fairly obvious at the time. And people used more or less exactly the same language to describe the world back then, too.

> These kinds of comments are extraordinarily disingenuous sounding, particularly when anyone can spend 3 seconds and figure out their primary market is literal children.

Poke Mongo was popular with people of all age groups, and (most) children have parents or other guardians to help them with these decisions.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#183

Post by chii »

relyks wrote: post #20

This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's…

> I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor.

you werent tricked - your location data doesn't belong to you when you use the game.

I don't get why people somehow feel that they are entitled to the post-facto profit/value derived from the data that at the time they're willingly giving away before they "knew of" the potential value.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#184

Post by eru »

JohnMakin wrote: post #168
denismi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly feel tricked that a gameplay mechanic which transparently asks you to record 50-100MB videos of a point-of-interest and upload it to their servers in exchange for an (often paid/premium) in-game reward was a form of data collection? I don't think I've done any in PoGo (so I know it's very optional), but I've done plenty in Ingress, and I honestly don't see how it's possible to be surprised that it was…

Oh yes, children, their primary market, definitely consider this. Definitely.

Most children have parents or other guardians.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#185

Post by eru »

dogcomplex wrote: post #161
relyks wrote: post #20

This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's…

Did anyone here on hackernews not seriously assume this was the real reason for the existence of that game since day 1?

I'm not sure about the 'real reason'.

It's perhaps more like: some folks an Niantic wanted to make a Pokemon game, and this way they could make it financially viable?

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#186

Post by eru »

CaptainFever wrote: post #43
relyks wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, do you really think that? I did it from having a desire to contribute to the conversation and I was aware that that would be a future possibility :) I'm not really getting much in return or being incentivized by Y combinator

I think the joke was that it's kind of the same with Pokemon GO. You play the game mainly because it's fun or lets you get some exercise in, so it's not really a bad thing that the company used the data to train a useful model. You're still having fun or doing exercise regardless of what they do with the data. Essentially, it's a positive externality: https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfa... Bu…

Technically, it's not an externality, because the company that benefits is clearly part of the transaction.

Nitpicking aside, I agree with you.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#187

Post by yalogin »

Even before LLMs, I knew they are going to launch a fine grained mapping service with all that camera and POI data. Now this one is actually much better obviously. Very few companies actually have this kind of data. Remains to be seen how they make money out of this

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#188

Post by eru »

earleybird wrote: post #106
bastloing wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is free, there has to be some way for them to profit, interesting to see this was it.

When ever it's free, it's all about the data. I recall having a conversation circa 2004/5 with a colleague that Google was an AI company, not a search company.

Search is AI. Or would have been considered AI in eg the 1980s.

The goalposts of what counts as AI are constantly moving further and further away. Simple algorithms like A* once counted as part of AI.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#189

Post by aidenn0 »

ggm wrote: post #65

Not wanting to over-do it, but is there possibly an argument the data about geospatial should be in the commons and google have some obligation to put the data back into the commons? I'm not arguing to a legal basis but if it's crowdsourced, then the inputs came from ordinary people. Sure, they signed to T&Cs. Philosophically, I think knowledge, facts of the world as it is, even the constructed world, should be publi…

In the US at least, "facts of the world as it is" are not generally copyrightable, though any creative process in the presentation of them may be.

Re: Niantic plans a “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

#190

Post by try_the_bass »

jzb wrote: post #104
try_the_bass wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is totally unfair, every niantic player should have access to all the stuff because they collectively made it I don't understand this perspective. While all players may have collectively made this model possible, no individual player could make a model like it based on their contributions alone. Since no single player could replicate this outcome based on only their data, does it not imply that there's value…

“Is a farmer entitled to the entirety of your work output because you ate a vegetable grown on their farm?” Bad analogy. I pay a farmer (directly or indirectly) for the vegetable. It’s a simple, understood, transaction. These players were generally unaware that they were gathering data for Niantic in this way. If data is crowdsourced it should belong to the crowd.

Niantic pays you for the data you collect, as well. It might pay you with in-game rewards, but if you accept those rewards, this is, as you put it, "a simple, understood transaction".

The farmers you buy the vegetables from are also generally unaware of how you use them, too!

I fail to see how you're differentiating the analogy from the original example.

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