geeknik1d ago

Pokémon Go players thought they were catching Pikachus.

They were actually building the nervous system for robot civilization.

500M humans. 30B images. Zero consent forms.

The game was the harvest.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/10/1134099/how-pokemon-go-is-helping-robots-deliver-pizza-on-time/

How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world

Niantic's AI spinout is training a new world model using 30 billion images of urban landmarks crowdsourced from players.

MIT Technology Review
Show threadgrmon
@geeknik this sound like a dystopian fiction. Don’t wanna believe it.
Mar 16 at 5:00amWeb
Show threadWerner1d ago
@grmon @geeknik
This has been well known for over a decade. Niantic always was about spatial data.