geeknik6d 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

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

MIT Technology Review
Show threadDarcy Casselman6d ago
@geeknik Having done the free labour of approving pokestops for them, I feel like they're overselling the quality of this data.
Show threadRetepkce 🐈
@flyingsquirrel @geeknik Absolutely. Some of this datapoints merely don't exist or are hundreds of meters away
Mar 16 at 9:42amWeb
Show threadAnnelies Kamran, Ph.D.5d ago
@Retepkce @flyingsquirrel @geeknik it will still be used as if 100% accurate. See for example, the Iranian girls' school.