cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1185607/how-pokemon-go-players-unknowingly-trained-military-drones-i-was-just-playing-a-game
Players of the game Pokémon Go scanned their environment for years for extra points. With the help of these billions of scans, an extremely precise navigation system has now been developed for military drones and robots, among others.
Pokémon Go’s parent company, Niatic received money from the CIA’s In-Q-Tel investment subsidiary. The Israeli military banned the game on bases when it was released. It was always a security hazard. Now it’s too late to do anything about it.
To be fair, the only reason having a detailed scan of the world is a bad thing is because we live in a fucked up world.
Same with AI
Another reason games need to be open source! 🫤
I don’t think that would change anything. The valuable part is the collected data. Even if the way that data is collected is open source or even if the data itself is open source, the issue is misusing that data.
When you’re in control of the software you can decided what it does: what data should be sent back (if any). Here a server hoster may refuse you if you do not collect data but that’s a much harder sell when all users are in control.
[Even harder when the server code is also freed, and anyone can host it]
Ahh, so now they can more easily identify which schools to bomb.
Offcourse it had to be the Dutch: one of the most apolitical and naive peoples of Europe.
Just because the reporting is in Dutch doesn’t mean only Dutch naively contributed to the database. It seems individuals all over the globe, having interacted with this in-game mechanic, have done so. But generally speaking, as a Dutch person myself, I cannot really argue with the rest of the comment haha…
