Incident Analysis: Perceived Bias in Pokémon Go's PokéStops Distribution

Recent complaints from users suggest a potential racial bias in the distribution of PokéStops within the augmented reality game, Pokémon Go. The concern is that certain areas predominantly inhabited by Black communities have fewer PokéStops compared to other neighborhoods. While Niantic Labs, the company behind the game, has not commented on these allegations directly, this issue highlights the need for responsible AI governance in all aspects of technology, including gaming platforms.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.11 — similarity 0.475, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.472, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 1.2 — similarity 0.459, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/73

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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