It is not exactly news that the corporate tech giants are using us, their "clients." in every possible way that they can. I just thought that this particular example is an illustration of just how far it goes.
Niantic is the company and technology behind Pokemon Go. I know very little about the game: at various times various of my grandsons have been enthralled with Pokemon *cards*, but I don't think any of them ever got into the online game. I did, once, encounter a person wandering around with a cell phone, who admitted to searching for ... well, whatever you search for in Pokemon Go.
Apparently, Niantic has been collecting visual and location data from those who have been playing the game. They are now feeding this into a geospatially-oriented large language model AI.
I am quite sure that whatever I type into ChatGPT, Claude, or Meta AI gets fed into ChatGPT, Claude, or Meta AI. I am quite sure that whatever I type into Bing or Edge gets fed into ChatGPT, and whatever I type into WhatsApp or Instagram gets fed into Meta AI. I didn't know enough about Niantic to suspect that anything typed into a game would be fed into a geospatial LLM, but, now that I know that they are interested, it's not surprising. I suppose that it is not as if my Instagram posts of someone's game playing constitutes any kind of copyrightable material that the company is "stealing" (although, now that the announcement has been made, I suspect that some lawyer, likely American, will try and prove that it is).
But it is one more illustration of how much the tech giants are using us, when we are using them.
(And, yes, the subject line is a reference to the comment that "if you are not paying for the product or service, you are the product.")
No comments:
Post a Comment