Whether it’s good or bad, it’s an AI world, and we’re all just living in it. Yes, even if that world is the world of Pokémon GO. Through the people of IGN, we learned that Pokémon GO developer Niantic is currently creating an AI designed to autocomplete real-world locations. This is done with a limited amount of information, using data collected by Pokémon GO players. It seems like this is just a new form of ChatGPT. But instead of text, it is actually applied to the physical world. What this AI does is train on what real-world places look like, and use that data to produce information about what real places it hasn’t seen yet might actually look like. Here’s what Niantic had to say about their latest technology:
The Pokémon Company
Imagine you are standing behind a church. Let’s assume the nearest local model has only seen the main entrance to that church and so can’t tell you where you are. The model has never seen the back of that building. But on a global scale we have seen many churches, thousands of them, all captured by their respective local models in other places around the world. No two churches are the same, but many have common characteristics. An LGM (Large Geospatial Model) is a way to access that distributed knowledge.
This can all exist because users are constantly scanning their environment while using Niantic’s apps, the most important of which Pokémon Go. According to Niantic, they currently have 10 million scanned locations around the world. Not to mention, a million usable with its VPS service. They receive about a million new scans every week, containing hundreds of individual images. Right now this is all used for the healthy pleasure of Pokémon Go. We’ll see what tomorrow brings when this kind of new technology is used for something less fun.
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