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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

#51

Post by ysofunny »

relyks wrote: post #31
rbrown wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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

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

#53

Post by piyh »

Applications that I thought of as I read this:

Real-Time mapping of the environment for VR experiences with built-in semantic understanding.

Winning at geoguesser, automated doxing of anybody posting a picture of themselves.

Robotic positioning and navigation

Asset generation for video games. Think about generating an alternate New York City that's more influenced by Nepal.

I'm getting echoes of neural radiance fields as well.

Procedural generation of an alternative planet is the kind of stuff that the No Man's sky devs could only dream of.

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

#54

Post by spencerflem »

nh23423fefe wrote: post #50
jillyboel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

tbh I don't think its a bad argument. There's plenty of things I'd do to be nice to a fellow person that I would Not do for the benefit of a large company.

What they're doing is (IMO) evil and anti-human and I do not want to be part of it

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

#55

Post by denismi »

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…

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 contributing to something like this? It is hardly an intuitively native standalone gameplay mechanic in either game.

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

#56

Post by spencerflem »

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…

I think that's part of it- but another part is a lot of people do not like what Gen AI is doing and are offended that what was a fun game is now part of that project.

Like when captchas were for making old books readable it felt a lot more friendly than now where its all driverless car nonsense

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

#57

Post by aqfamnzc »

ysofunny wrote: post #51
relyks wrote: post #31

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

> 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

Welcome to the modern internet. While you're at it, please get me access to Google's captcha models facebook face directory Google's GPS location data hoard, (most every android phone on the planet 24/7 (!) and any iPhone navigating with gmaps) And so on and so on

All of which I've directly contributed to and never (directly) recieved anything in return

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

#58

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

It's OK to adjust the title to have more relevant facts or to fix a poorly worded one. Editorializing is more like 'Amazing: Niantic makes world-changing AI breakthrough'.

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

#59

Post by whamlastxmas »

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?

Women on the street didn’t agree to a terms of service and didn’t choose to put content online.

The better metaphor is a woman posting her photos online and then those photos were used by a painter who then sold an abstract painting of her.

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

#60

Post by aydyn »

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!

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