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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

#41

Post by josh_cutler »

mxfh wrote: post #28

Somehow I always thought something like that would have been the ultimate use case for Microsoft Photosynth (developed from Photo Tourism research project), ideally with a time dimension, like browsing photos in a geo spatio-temporal context. I expect that was also some reason behind their flickr bid back then. https://medium.com/@dddexperiments/why-i-preserved-photosynt... https://phototour.cs.washington.edu https:/…

I worked on this and yes it was 100% related to the interest in Flickr. At the time Google Street had just become a thing and there was interest in effectively crowdsourcing the photography via Flickr and some of the technology behind Photosynth.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

jillyboel wrote: post #34
fragmede wrote: post #25

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]

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by CaptainFever »

relyks wrote: post #29
fragmede wrote: post #25

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!

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...

But I think your point, if I understand it correctly, is that the in-game rewards kind of "hacked your brain" to do it, which is the part you're objecting to?

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

#44

Post by CaptainFever »

relyks wrote: post #36
CaptainFever wrote: post #7

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.

That's good information, thank you!

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

#45

Post by jillyboel »

chottocharaii wrote: post #39
jillyboel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

Because the goal is to replace you with a machine and to widen the poverty gap. Also because I do not consent to it.

Are you also fine with taking pictures of pretty women on the street (hey, they'd be walking there anyway) and posting them online and farming ad revenue? Or training a model on their likeness for porn?

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

#46

Post by AndrewKemendo »

This is literally what I built my first company around starting in 2012, when Niantic was still working on Ingress

I describe it here during 500 Startups demo day: https://youtu.be/3oYHxdL93zE?si=cvLob-NHNEIJqYrI&t=6411

I further described it on the Planet of the Apps episode 1

Here's my patent from 2018: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10977818B2/en

So. I'm not really sure what to do here given that this was exactly and specifically what we were building and frankly had a lot of success in actually building.

Quite frustrating

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

#47

Post by forgetfreeman »

chottocharaii wrote: post #39
jillyboel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

You're mislabeling rent-seeking as value creation. Perhaps this is the root of your misunderstanding?

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

#48

Post by fragmede »

jillyboel wrote: post #34
fragmede wrote: post #25

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]

You think that's bad, wait till you find out about what happens at work!

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

#50

Post by nh23423fefe »

jillyboel wrote: post #45
chottocharaii wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because the goal is to replace you with a machine and to widen the poverty gap. Also because I do not consent to it. Are you also fine with taking pictures of pretty women on the street (hey, they'd be walking there anyway) and posting them online and farming ad revenue? Or training a model on their likeness for porn?

I don't like bad arguments like this.
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