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Niantic announces “Large Geospatial Model” trained on Pokémon Go player data

(nianticlabs.com)
383 points bookstore-romeo | 26 comments | 19 Nov 24 20:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.003s | source | bottom
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relyks ◴[20 Nov 24 22:26 UTC] No.42198768[source]▶
This is pretty cool, but I feel as a pokehunter (Pokemon Go player), I have been tricked into working to contribute training data so that they can profit off my labor. How? They consistently incentivize you to scan pokestops (physical locations) through "research tasks" and give you some useful items as rewards. The effort is usually much more significant than what you get in return, so I have stopped doing it. It's not very convenient to take a video around the object or location in question. If they release the model and weights, though, I will feel I contributed to the greater good.
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1. fragmede ◴[20 Nov 24 22:31 UTC] No.42198820[source]▶
You've also been tricked into making your comment, which will undoubtedly be fed into an LLM's training corpus, and someone will be profiting off that, along with my comment as well. What a future we live in!
replies(5): >>42198830 #>>42198850 #>>42198879 #>>42200660 #>>42201608 #
2. rbrown ◴[20 Nov 24 22:32 UTC] No.42198830[source]▶
NooooooooooOooOooOo!
replies(1): >>42198855 #
3. relyks ◴[20 Nov 24 22:35 UTC] No.42198850[source]▶
Lol, do you really think that? I did it from having a desire to contribute to the conversation and I was aware that that would be a future possibility :) I'm not really getting much in return or being incentivized by Y combinator
replies(1): >>42198941 #
4. ◴[20 Nov 24 22:35 UTC] No.42198855[source]▶
5. chottocharaii ◴[20 Nov 24 22:44 UTC] No.42198915[source]▶
I don't understand this perspective. Why should I resent the creation of value from behaviours that I would be doing anyway.
replies(3): >>42198958 #>>42198979 #>>42199378 #
6. ◴[20 Nov 24 22:48 UTC] No.42198938[source]▶
7. CaptainFever ◴[20 Nov 24 22:48 UTC] No.42198941[source]▶
I think the joke was that it's kind of the same with Pokemon GO. You play the game mainly because it's fun or lets you get some exercise in, so it's not really a bad thing that the company used the data to train a useful model. You're still having fun or doing exercise regardless of what they do with the data. Essentially, it's a positive externality: https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfa...

But I think your point, if I understand it correctly, is that the in-game rewards kind of "hacked your brain" to do it, which is the part you're objecting to?

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8. jillyboel ◴[20 Nov 24 22:50 UTC] No.42198958{3}[source]▶
Because the goal is to replace you with a machine and to widen the poverty gap. Also because I do not consent to it.

Are you also fine with taking pictures of pretty women on the street (hey, they'd be walking there anyway) and posting them online and farming ad revenue? Or training a model on their likeness for porn?

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9. forgetfreeman ◴[20 Nov 24 22:52 UTC] No.42198979{3}[source]▶
You're mislabeling rent-seeking as value creation. Perhaps this is the root of your misunderstanding?
replies(2): >>42199283 #>>42200006 #
10. fragmede ◴[20 Nov 24 22:54 UTC] No.42198998[source]▶
You think that's bad, wait till you find out about what happens at work!
11. nh23423fefe ◴[20 Nov 24 23:09 UTC] No.42199103{4}[source]▶
I don't like bad arguments like this.
replies(2): >>42199171 #>>42199389 #
12. spencerflem ◴[20 Nov 24 23:20 UTC] No.42199171{5}[source]▶
tbh I don't think its a bad argument. There's plenty of things I'd do to be nice to a fellow person that I would Not do for the benefit of a large company.

What they're doing is (IMO) evil and anti-human and I do not want to be part of it

13. spencerflem ◴[20 Nov 24 23:23 UTC] No.42199197{3}[source]▶
I think that's part of it- but another part is a lot of people do not like what Gen AI is doing and are offended that what was a fun game is now part of that project.

Like when captchas were for making old books readable it felt a lot more friendly than now where its all driverless car nonsense

14. whamlastxmas ◴[20 Nov 24 23:30 UTC] No.42199258{4}[source]▶
Women on the street didn’t agree to a terms of service and didn’t choose to put content online.

The better metaphor is a woman posting her photos online and then those photos were used by a painter who then sold an abstract painting of her.

15. aydyn ◴[20 Nov 24 23:34 UTC] No.42199283{4}[source]▶
Not really, you're assuming that your independent actions or forum comments have intrinsic value. They do not.
replies(1): >>42199611 #
16. UltraSane ◴[20 Nov 24 23:44 UTC] No.42199378{3}[source]▶
Because AI is going to create a world where only a few hundred trillionaires and a few thousand billionaires exist while everyone else is in desperate poverty.
17. UltraSane ◴[20 Nov 24 23:45 UTC] No.42199389{5}[source]▶
It is exactly the conclusion that capitalism and maximizing shareholder value leads to.
18. fragmede ◴[20 Nov 24 23:57 UTC] No.42199479{4}[source]▶
https://www.earthcam.com/cams/newyork/timessquare/?cam=tsrob...

is a webcam of Times Square, and they've got ads on the page, and they're making money off pictures of pretty men and women on that street. I don't know how okay or not I am with it, but it's the world we live in.

19. blibble ◴[21 Nov 24 00:13 UTC] No.42199611{5}[source]▶
then there's no need for the AI parasites to train on them
replies(1): >>42201592 #
20. alwa ◴[21 Nov 24 00:21 UTC] No.42199670{4}[source]▶
Didn’t beloved New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham make a storied career out of doing exactly that?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/style/bill-cunningham-boo...

21. spencerflem ◴[21 Nov 24 01:15 UTC] No.42200006{4}[source]▶
Tbh, I'm not sure its rent seeking, but whether the 'value' is for the company or for society is extremely questionable
22. ◴[21 Nov 24 01:17 UTC] No.42200019{3}[source]▶
23. RobRivera ◴[21 Nov 24 02:59 UTC] No.42200660[source]▶
Baba booy bbaba booy Batman bats badly barring the baristers bearing.

Magic schoolbus!

Yea, take that llm model maker

24. eru ◴[21 Nov 24 03:36 UTC] No.42200855{3}[source]▶
Technically, it's not an externality, because the company that benefits is clearly part of the transaction.

Nitpicking aside, I agree with you.

25. aydyn ◴[21 Nov 24 06:09 UTC] No.42201592{6}[source]▶
Does sand have much intrinsic value, or is the value coming from the technology to make integrated circuits? Is the fabrication process parasitic too?

Lots of cope here. Ostensibly, some people cant handle a simple observable fact.

26. numpad0 ◴[21 Nov 24 06:14 UTC] No.42201608[source]▶
If anything, it makes me sad that Google sat and watched OpenAI tarnish public recognition of AI, and meanwhile no one had figured out realistic digital persona reconstruction from Twitter logs applicable to arbitrary users. I've made so much of my "effort" into the Internet digital corpus with that purpose in mind!

Note to future digital me, do as I did 2007-2014. I approve.