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

nianticlabs.com

31–40 of 365 posts

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

#31
post #23
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…

They won't. It's the same data collection play as every other Google project Just for clarity on this comment and a separate one, Niantic is a Google spin out company and appears to still be majority shareholder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc.#As_an_independen...

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

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

#32

This title is editorialized. The real title is: "Building a Large Geospatial Model to Achieve Spatial Intelligence" > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. My personal layman's opinion: I'm mostly surprised that they were able to do this. When I played Pokémon GO a few years back, the AR was so slow that I rarely used it. Apparently it's so popular and commo…

All they needed was a shit ton of pictures. The AR responsiveness (and Pokemon Go) have nothing to do with it. It was just a vehicle for gathering training data.

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

#33
post #6

I wonder how this can be combined with satellite data, if at all?

I don’t see why not. Photos are often combined with satellite data for photogrammetry purposes, even on large scale - see the recent Microsoft Flight Simulator (in a couple days, when it actually works)

It's usually aerial data, especially oblique aerial. Bing Maps is still pretty unique in offering them undistorted and not draped over some always degraded mesh.

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

#34
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…

You've also been tricked into making your comment, which will undoubtedly be fed into an LLM's training corpus, and someone will be profiting off that, along with my comment as well. What a future we live in!

[flagged]

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

#36

This title is editorialized. The real title is: "Building a Large Geospatial Model to Achieve Spatial Intelligence" > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. My personal layman's opinion: I'm mostly surprised that they were able to do this. When I played Pokémon GO a few years back, the AR was so slow that I rarely used it. Apparently it's so popular and commo…

I'm pretty sure most of the data is not coming from the AR features. There are tasks in the game to actually "scan" locations. Most people I know who play also play the game without the AR features turned on unless there's an incentive.

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

#37
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…

Yeah, they did the same in Ingress: film a portal (pokéstop/gym) while walking around it to gain a small reward. I've always wondered what kind of dataset they were building with that -- now we know!

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

#38
I’ve published research in this general arena and the sheer amount of data they need to get good is massive. They have a moat the size of an ocean until most people have cameras and depth sensors on their face

It’s funny, we actually started by having people play games as well but we expressly told them it was to collect data. Brilliant to use an AR game that people actually play for fun

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

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've also been tricked into making your comment, which will undoubtedly be fed into an LLM's training corpus, and someone will be profiting off that, along with my comment as well. What a future we live in!

[flagged]

I don't understand this perspective. Why should I resent the creation of value from behaviours that I would be doing anyway.

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

#40
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pokemon Go is built on the same engine as Inverness I think its called. When it launched they even used the same POIs. I think this was ~5-7 years before PGO launched. Edit: I said inverness and meant ingress. Apologies.

I think you are thinking of Ingress. No idea what Inverness is. Ingress and PGO share the same portals and stuffs and its what PGO got its data from.

Inverness is a city in Scotland
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