Pokémon Go players spent ten years building a robot navigation system without knowing it

Industry 1.7K points 211 comments 1 month ago

Niantic just announced their delivery robot deal. When they sold Pokémon Go to Scopely last year, they kept all the data. 30 billion images from player scans over 10 years. They used it to build a navigation system that now guides delivery robots through cities in LA, Chicago and Helsinki. The pokéstops weren't random. They were placed specifically to get photo coverage of urban areas. This happens in other companies too, google reCAPTCHA did the same thing. Every traffic light you clicked was labeling data for self-driving cars. Millions of hours of unpaid work. Did you play Pokémon Go back in 2016? Feels weird knowing what those walks were actually for Could we rely on future games or navigation systems?

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