Does anyone remember Ingress? I always wondered what it was we were training by playing that game.
Considering that Niantic was behind both ingress and pokemon go, the answer is all of this.
'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
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Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I should not need to work for free, give my data, and god knows what to play a game. The game is free, with doing so being the price. If you don't like that price, you can always pay $80 for a traditional Pokemon game. As such, I don't get the handwringing. There is no such thing as a free lunch and never will be.
Is there an $80 Pokémon game where walking outside is a core mechanic and that facilitates interaction with a huge network of users?
A long time ago they had the games that came with a "Pokéwalker", which was a pedometer that acted as a sort of mini-game, but that's the closest they got to a mainstream game where you have to get off the couch. It almost meets your specification (well, did, I'm sure the internet part is offline so you're not connected anymore), but it's obviously not exactly what you meant.
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#73Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#74Niantic has been doing this for a long time starting with Ingress. I've maybe done a handful of scans in PoGo but as others have mentioned the rewards were just not worth the trouble. The rewards for doing it in Ingress were much better (at least back in the day).
I'm more split on my feelings towards it these days given our current political/social climate but part of me still thinks the idea of mapping the real world in great detail is a worthy endeavor if it can be done "right". I'd probably be more inclined to support it if they would release the data or make it publicly accessible for others to use but it being tied to the whims of a corporation (even one that's been less shitty than most) makes it hard to get behind.
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#75Nintendo's brand means nothing.
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#76I like Pokemon Go and play almost every day. I did this scan one time and then stopped. The rewards are not worth the hassle. I don't think many players are doing it. It's just very weird to stand somewhere and scan an object. I also wouldn't say 'unknowingly trained', it's pretty obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.
> I don't think many players are doing it. Do we have to think ? Apparently they amassed 30B images. :)
30B images isn't that much in the context of Pokemon Go playerbase of ~50 million (conservative estimate based on users today). That's about 600 images per person, in a game that has been out since 2016... that's pretty low adoption as the previous user said. I don't think the quest has been out since 2016, but considering a large fraction of users are basically daily users, it's still quite a small number of images.
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#77Pretty sure you take a video when you’re doing this task so the images are extra extracted from the video?
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#78My friend plays Pokémon Go for hours every day while walking his dog. I asked him about this and now we’re both confused. The in game scanning is only for major landmarks in the game. Even in his dense city these landmarks are few and far between. The world model would only have sparse information in the area immediately surrounding these landmarks. I don’t know if there’s much substance to the delivery robot story.…
I was thinking the 'scan a pokestop' data would be very patchy but I guess they also have images from people catching pokemon in AR mode?
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to work and if you do you get rewarded in the game. Money is not the only motivating factor for people. Even something like keeping Google Map up to date can bring value to people from helping others. Helping others is not zero sum. Just because a company benefits from helping others that doesn't mean it's bad.
You're right in that money is not the only motivator for people. I would also argue that if you told them the _real_ reason, aka your own actual motivation behind the offer, the number of people who would actually be "playing" would be much lower. I would be motivated to collect free data if it meant I was helping save lives, with that help not being behind a paywall. I would be motivated to play a free game with ads…
Same thing with social media. If they clearly disclosed that the more time they spend glued to their apps the more money the company makes the majority would be turned off.
Re: 'Pokémon Go' players unknowingly trained delivery robots with 30B images
#80I like Pokemon Go and play almost every day. I did this scan one time and then stopped. The rewards are not worth the hassle. I don't think many players are doing it. It's just very weird to stand somewhere and scan an object. I also wouldn't say 'unknowingly trained', it's pretty obvious what it does, and I think the game even tells you that they want to understands how the POI looks like in 3D.
I used to just record the ground and even leave out my feet, but apparently they detect and ban people who do this too often now. The data was always going somewhere shady, but after the sale it is even worse so I just stopped completely. At best you get a poffin or rare candy and that absolutely is not worth it.