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0 pointscommoner4y ago0 comments

Mapwith.ai is a great tool that lets the server draw the shapes of the buildings and roads, though you still have to fill out the data by hand. The tool is maintained by Facebook, but the front-end[1] is a FOSS fork of OSM's RapiD web editor, and OSM is the type of project that strongly benefits from corporate contributions.[2]

[1] https://github.com/facebookincubator/RapiD

[2] https://joemorrison.substack.com/p/openstreetmap-is-having-a...

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petre4y ago· 2 in thread

Unsuspecting people using AI generated datasets have ended up freezing to death.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway#Present
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98

commonerOP4y ago

Mapwith.ai works by tracing satellite imagery. No data is added into OSM until a person manually confirms that the road and building outlines match the satellite imagery, adjusting the outlines if necessary.

While the Google Maps incident you linked to was tragic, using AI to accelerate road tracing before the outlines are confirmed by a person shouldn't be any worse than having the person trace the outlines without assistance.

petre4y ago

It makes little difference if the person is on another remote continent. We used IR imagery to trace forests in Africa, but incorrectly routing someone on an abandoned road in -50°C temperatures because "this route is 30 minutes faster" is just irresponsible. Roads through the African jungle can change every few years. That's why one should prefer local mapping resources to AI while navigating.

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