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 threadCarlos Solís
@geeknik I mean, wasn't the GPS data already meant to analyze pedestrian walking routes, back when Niantic was working with Google? Using the camera capture data to analyze pedestrian architecture was a relatively simple stretch. Scummy, kinda, expected, I guess. I haven't played Pokemon Go in almost a decade anyways.
Mar 16 at 1:34pmWeb