Incident 73: Is Pokémon Go racist? How the app may be redlining communities of color

Description: Through a crowdsourcing social media campaign in 2016, several journalists and researchers demonstrated that augmented reality locations in the popular smartphone game Pokemon Go were more likely to be in white neighborhoods.

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Alleged: Niantic Labs developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed non-white neighborhoods and communities of color.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
73
Report Count
8
Incident Date
2016-03-01
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

In 2016, several sources demonstrated that augmented reality locations in Pokemon Go, a popular smartphone game, were more likely to be located in white neighborhoods. Aura Bogado, an environmental reporter, first noticed the bias in her Los Angeles neighborhood and, through a social media campaign that she launched, researchers and journalists replicated her results across the United States. The game creator Niantic Labs revealed that the Pokemon Go map was derived from a previous augmented reality game, Ingress. Ingress crowdsourced its map from users, who tended to be young, male, white, and English-speaking.

Short Description

Through a crowdsourcing social media campaign in 2016, several journalists and researchers demonstrated that augmented reality locations in the popular smartphone game Pokemon Go were more likely to be in white neighborhoods.

Severity

Negligible

Harm Distribution Basis

Race, National origin or immigrant status, Geography

Harm Type

Harm to social or political systems

AI System Description

Pokemon Go, an augmented reality smartphone game.

System Developer

Niantic Labs

Sector of Deployment

Arts, entertainment and recreation

Relevant AI functions

Unclear

AI Techniques

Game AI

AI Applications

procedural content generation

Location

United States

Named Entities

Pokemon Go, Niantic Labs, John Hanke, Aura Bogado, Ingress

Technology Purveyor

Niantic Labs

Beginning Date

2016-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Ending Date

2016-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Near Miss

Harm caused

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

No

Data Inputs

user data from the game Ingress

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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