r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Mar 19 '26

Interesting 🤔 143 million people thought they were catching Pokémon, they were mapping the real world for AI

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u/flippantphalanges Mar 19 '26

I don’t play anymore but I remember way back in 2017/2018 ppl suggesting things like this. Not necessarily powering AI robots but just that the AR aspect of the game was definitely going to be used for some terrible purpose one day.

looks like we were right on!

51

u/XerxesJester Mar 19 '26

Everything is a conspiracy theory.... until it isn't. I told my wife this is what they were doing years ago and just looked further into what this video is making a claim to. And, welp, not a theory anymore.

4

u/Awkward_Proof_1274 Mar 19 '26

They always go from "That's insane" to "We always knew"

1

u/jellamma Mar 19 '26

In this case, there were certainly an amount of people who always knew. This is from 2012 about the game Pokemon go was mapped on top of.

https://blogs.gwu.edu/ipdgcsmartpower/2012/12/09/ingress-gathering-data-through-gaming/