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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

#261

Post by interroboink »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #230
interroboink wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing in our society operates in a way that might imply this. I beg your pardon? Consider just about any physical belonging — say, a book. When I buy a book, it belongs to me. When I read a book in my home, I expect it to be a private experience (nobody data-mining my eyeball movements, for example). This applies to all sorts of things. Even electronic things — if I put some files on a USB stick I expect them to…

> Consider just about any physical belonging — say, a book. When I buy a book, it belongs to me. When I read a book in my home, I expect it to be a private experience (nobody data-mining my eyeball movements, for example). Perhaps this is just my own brain's degradation, but how far removed from society do you need to be to expect your purchases to not be sold to the highest bidder? This practice is certainly older t…

Perhaps my main objection is that you said "Nothing in our society X" rather than "many things in our society Y."

I was just providing some counter-examples to show that there's more than nothing at play, here.

Certainly there are oodles of examples of our data being sold behind our backs, even well before 40 years ago. But there are also oodles of examples of the opposite.

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

#262

Post by jjallen »

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…

At some point can we agree that if we don't pay anything for something and we experience something fun, it's ok for the company to get something for investing millions of dollars in creating the experience for us in return?

If you weren't aware until now and were having fun is this outcome so bad? Did you have a work contract with this company to provide labor for wages and they didn't pay you? if not, then I don't think you can be upset that they are possibly profiting from your "labor".

Every time we visit a site that is free, which means 99.9% of all websites, that website bore a cost for our visit. Sometimes they show us ads which sometimes offsets the cost of creating the content and hosting it.

I am personally very glad with this arrangement. If a site is too ad filled, I just leave immediately.

With a game that is free and fun, I would be happy that I didn't have to pay anything and that the creator figured out a way for both parties to get something out of the deal. Isn't that a win-win situation?

Also, calling your experience "labor" when you were presumably having fun (if you weren't then why were you playing without expectation for payment in return?) is disingenuous.

At some point we need to be realistic about the world in which we live. Companies provide things for free or for money. If they provide something for "free", then we can't really expect to be compensated for our "labor" playing the game and that yes, the company is probably trying to figure out how to recoup their investment.

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

#263

Post by invariantviola »

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…

Really? You feel … tricked? Are you new around here??

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

#264

Post by Matticus_Rex »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #133
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Niantic was clear about the product of the labor: In exchange for swiping the PokeStop, you'd get the rewards. No one was ever told they'd get more than that, and no one had any reasonable expectation that they'd get more.

Expectations are often unreasonable from some perspective. It's not difficult to see why users are upset.

For people who've dealt with children a lot, sure. But making an exchange and then expecting a cut of the other side's profits on top of what you exchanged for is possibly the definition of unreasonable expectations.

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

#265

Post by icehawk »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #132
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Niantic was clear about the product of the labor: In exchange for swiping the PokeStop, you'd get the rewards. No one was ever told they'd get more than that, and no one had any reasonable expectation that they'd get more.

Exactly! Everyone thought that the exchange was them doing something in the game, and Niantic was giving them the rewards in the game, and no one had any reasonable expectation that Niantic would get more outside of the game. (After all, neither Blizzard or Square get anything when one completes quest objectives in their MMO.)

So obviously, now that Niantic is getting things outside the game its reasonable the people who did the work ask for something from that.

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

#266

Post by worthless-trash »

dangoodmanUT wrote: post #213
_qxb9 wrote: post #193

We do this at [name redacted as this was a joke]. When users scan their barcode, the preview window is zoomed in so users think its mostly barcode. We actually get quite a bit more background noise typically of a fridge, supermarket aisle, pantry etc. but it is sent across to us, stored, and trained on. Within the next year we will have a pretty good idea of the average pantry, fridge, supermarket aisle. Who knows wh…

brother definitely just violated an NDA

For when this is in court:

Hello court jurors ! I hope you're having a great day. One of the attorneys breath smells pretty bad, am I right ?

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

reissbaker wrote: post #255

I'm confused by both this blog post, and the reception on HN. They... didn't actually train the model. This is an announcement of a plan! They don't actually know if it'll even work. They announced that they "trained over 50 million neural networks," but not that they've trained this neural network: the other networks appear to just have been things they were doing anyway (i.e. the "Virtual Positioning Systems"). The…

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by Larrikin »

try_the_bass wrote: post #91
ysofunny wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google actually has released weights for some of their models, but judging by the fact that this model is potentially valuable, they likely will not allow Niantic for this which is totally unfair, every niantic player should have access to all the stuff because they collectively made it

> 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…

People who think like this and want to profit off you with KPIs is why players should always maliciously comply with data grabs. Spend the 30 seconds activating the accelerometer and doing sweeps of your shoes and full finger covers of the surroundings to get those poffins and rare candies. It's gross that lately they want to give me 10 pokeballs now instead.

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

#269

Post by hackernewds »

isodev wrote: post #218
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 feel … I have been tricked Everything “free” coming from a company means they’ve found a way to monetise you in some way. The big long ToS we all casually accept without reading says so too. Other random examples which appear free but aren’t: using a search engine, using the browser that comes with your phone, instagram, YouTube… etc. It’s not always about data collection, sometimes it’s platform lock-in, or some…

only a sith speaks in absolute. plenty of especially free AI products out there

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

#270

Post by hackernewds »

saxonww wrote: post #134
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone think niantic would protect user-data from profit?

Sarcastically, no one should. Unsarcastically, a lot of people believe user data belongs to users, and that they should have a say in how it's used. Here, I think the point is that Niantic decided they could use the data this way and weren't transparent about it until it was already done. I'm sure I would be in the minority, but I would never have played - or never have done certain things like the research tasks - h…

there should be a legal framework for data is protected. until then this is what we get
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