[HN Gopher] How AI is changing gymnastics judging
___________________________________________________________________
How AI is changing gymnastics judging
Author : mjwhansen
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-01-25 08:47 UTC (14 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| "Gymnastics is a subjective sport, like diving or dressage, where
| factors like nationality, body type, the location of a judge's
| chair, and vague concepts like "artistry" and "performance"
| affect scores."
|
| Even though it's a subjectively judged event, the scores somehow
| have three decimal places!
| mjwhansen wrote:
| There's a 200+ page Code of Points[1] that determines how much
| each skill is worth as well as each error. At the elite level,
| there's a panel of 9 judges for each event, divided into judges
| who tally the execution score and the difficulty score, and the
| reference panel that effectively audits the execution score.[2]
| The difficulty and execution scores are averaged. This is how
| you can get three-decimal scores due to averaging. Here is an
| example of a judge's score sheet.[2]
|
| (Nevertheless, there are still issues with bias, where athletes
| or teams who benefit from a particular judge's biases might
| have their errors more gently scored. For example, on the bars,
| gymnasts are required to hit a handstand position within a
| 10-degree range of vertical. But a judge who is impacted by a
| bias, or a certain viewing position, many not notice that a
| particular handstand was at 15 degrees, and not deduct
| accordingly. This is where the AI judging may be particularly
| helpful.)
|
| [1]
| https://www.gymnastics.sport/publicdir/rules/files/en_2022-2...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYjhFnaoF90&t=408s
|
| [3] https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/gymnastics-101-scoring
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| This whole affair seems rather silly IMO. For all the
| hullabaloo about AI killing art, I feel like this kind of
| fine grained scoring does more damage to art than AI ever
| will.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| AI _is_ a fine grained score-card.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| I am a little confused how anyone thinks AI will do better than
| humans at not weighting the score based on those exact factors,
| given what we've seen so far.
| jpnc wrote:
| >JSS is not currently used to make determinations about artistry,
| and it still isn't considered ready to use on certain complex
| routine components, like beam connections and dance elements on
| floor; the tech just isn't there yet
|
| So at what point does a sensor of some kind that does some
| computation become 'AI'? Is this just marketing buzzword
| bandwagoning?
| mjwhansen wrote:
| A more precise term might be "computer vision," which is indeed
| a field of AI, but it is a less-known term even among a
| reasonably technical laypeople (such as might be reading a
| business publication like the MIT Tech Review).
| ben_w wrote:
| > So at what point does a sensor of some kind that does some
| computation become 'AI'?
|
| By going backwards in time -- I'd guess sometime between 2010
| and 1995.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I sometimes joke that at some point humans cease to be
| considered intelligent too.
| world2vec wrote:
| >(...) says FIG's Steve Butcher, who previously served as sport
| director for the organization and is now the president of the
| element-recognition working group for Fujitsu, the company that
| developed the AI."
|
| Oh boy, considering the Horizon debacle going on in the UK, I can
| expect a similar story in Olympic gymnastics in the near
| future...
| vander_elst wrote:
| Anyone aware of there are proposals to use computer vision for
| judging the technical part and the judges for the artistic part?
| On paper that should help fulfilling both schools of thought
| t_mann wrote:
| It's not just the _je ne sais quoi_ performance aspect that I 'd
| be concerned about, it's something I'd call _Wii-Sports_
| -ification: the first time you try out movement-controlled games
| like they made the Wii console popular, you'll likely put a lot
| of effort into the movements as if you were wielding a real
| tennis racket or a golf club. After a while, you realize that the
| motion sensor is much more coarse, and you do much more
| efficient, bastardized versions of the original movements. While
| I acknowledge that this system is supposed to be much more
| sensitive, I'd expect a similar effect to be happening once
| athletes get their hands on those machines in training: they'll
| figure out how to best trigger the detection of each move, and
| how much flexing of the toes, bending in the back and overall
| effort is just enough for the machine, and it's going to change
| the look and feel of the sport.
| nottorp wrote:
| To summarize, before they were doing stuff that a human judge
| will notice.
|
| After, they will do stuff that the "AI" will notice.
|
| Goes for any physical sport that needs human judges instead of
| something measurable, like running speed, for their
| competitions.
|
| Pretty sure if you do competitional martial arts you train a
| subset of techniques that will be very visible and score you
| points as well.
| avery17 wrote:
| Yeah but the judges are human and are typically different
| humans at each event with different opinions and abilities to
| notice subtlties. There is no one standard human judge to
| abuse but with AI there is a single standard.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I wonder if having some intrinsic randomness to the AI
| model would help to mitigate this problem? So that each AI
| has a subtly different perception of the move, and in order
| to satisfy every possible judge, the gymnast would need to
| complete the move as comprehensively as possible.
| badRNG wrote:
| > I wonder if having some intrinsic randomness to the AI
| model would help to mitigate this problem?
|
| This would result in identical performances resulting in
| different scores with the difference being artificially
| arbitrary.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which for two identical performances - an impossibility -
| would be an issue, but for two different performances
| would still yield different scores.
| pixl97 wrote:
| So just like human judges?
| lupire wrote:
| Sure, you can reduce all of humanity to a random number
| generator, if you want
| bumby wrote:
| Maybe a slightly more generous take isn't that humans are
| random, but their value systems have some sort of
| distribution. I'm unfamiliar with gymnastics scoring, but
| judges may have different perspectives on what matters
| most if you take a sport like boxing that applies
| subjective scoring. One judge may value footwork and the
| jab more, while another weights power punches more, while
| another is swayed by seeing a competitor who is bloodier
| by the end of the fight despite having a more technically
| proficient fight.
| nottorp wrote:
| The "AI" already hallucinates doesn't it?
| t_mann wrote:
| Exactly. Right now, the best an athlete can do is to just
| give it their all, and I guess for a lot of people that
| would be what gymnastics is about. The potential for
| optimization with such machines is just on another level.
| You can re-run others' routines to see how you'd have
| scored, you can do thousands of reps to test the limits of
| the algorithm, you can code ragdoll simulators to find
| pockets of optimization,... Gymnasts will be discussing
| software glitches, version differences, how to 'break the
| algorithm'. Not even saying that's a bad thing, maybe it'll
| do for gymnastics what AI did for chess, open it up to a
| wider audience. Just saying that it could lead to a very
| different gymnastics scene, that will maybe look a bit more
| like eg the speed running communities for video games.
| lupire wrote:
| It's not like chess. Chess has clear, simple, inhuman
| rules. Gymnastics doesn't.
| t_mann wrote:
| Just an example of a sport that got quite reshaped by AI,
| but not necessarily in a bad way. The differences between
| the sports could hardly be greater, and the way they'd be
| impacted by computers would also likely be quite
| different.
| adolph wrote:
| Apparently Go has also been reshaped:
|
| _Humans have improved at Go since AIs became best in the
| world_
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2364137-humans-have-
| imp...
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Would be cool to see that how well you are doing bar on
| chess.com (on the left) continuously change during a
| gymnastics routine.
| sdwr wrote:
| Gymnastics, Olympics, is meant to be a celebration of the
| human body and spirit. The micro-optimizations ruin it,
| because they break the alignment between casual
| participants and the best.
|
| Regular people exercising should be inspired and uplifted
| by the elites, but it doesn't work when they're playing a
| different game entirely at the top.
| nottorp wrote:
| So is chess tbh. Even excluding computer chess. You can
| play it by ear at an amateur level, but if you want to
| compete you have to memorize those openings. Which sucks
| all the joy out of the game.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Maybe everything has an amateur level that's just hard
| enough to be challenging, but still easy enough to be
| played primarily by ear.
|
| Maybe that's most people's careers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Is it established that an AI judge would judge everyone the
| same? That it would be impartial?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| This is a concern I also have. Perhaps the AI
| underfits/overfits and then an unusually-sized athlete
| comes along and the AI judges very poorly.
| Teleoflexuous wrote:
| As usual, more proper (and entirely valid) concern is
| whether it would be biased less/in ways we prefer
| compared to humans.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >There is no one standard human judge to abuse but with AI
| there is a single standard.
|
| Having one _and only one_ judging standard is a _good_
| thing.
| kuboble wrote:
| Imagine we create an ai box and say that the box decides
| the results. It has been trained to judge those gymnastic
| acrobatics and is decision is final.
|
| What will inevitably happen is a guy will come to the
| competition with a weird pattern on his t-shirt and get a
| perfect score without preforming any of the exercise.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| The competitors also choose their judges, in aggregate. This
| is a bad idea to change.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Exactly, its basically a variation of Goodhart's Law - "when a
| measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
| Nashooo wrote:
| Not really. It depends on the quality of the measure and any
| underlying assumptions. If the target is knowing who is the
| fastest then a simple stopwatch (measure) is 100% aligned
| with the target. So the measure becoming the target is
| completely fine.
|
| The problem comes when one (or multiple) measure(s) are an
| approximation of some ideal measure for the target. For
| example the famous example [1] of the measuring rat tails to
| determine killed rats (target). The faulty assumption here
| was that the only way to hand in a rat's tail is by killing
| them.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanoi_Rat_Massacre
| je42 wrote:
| Unfortunately not true. It is not a single metric.
|
| we have extra rules on top: No doping, separation of
| genders,...
| IanCal wrote:
| > Not really. It depends on the quality of the measure and
| any underlying assumptions. If the target is knowing who is
| the fastest then a simple stopwatch (measure) is 100%
| aligned with the target. So the measure becoming the target
| is completely fine.
|
| I get your point but with this case the measure _is_ the
| target, so at no point does the "measurement become the
| target", it's aligned from the start. But then again, this
| is only true if your measure is of people performing the
| task you actually care about. If you want to know the
| fastest person and you measure over 100m you may end up
| with Bolt, which is great if you need "the fastest over
| 100m in a sprinting setup" but not if you need the fastest
| over a full marathon.
|
| In general, it's an extremely good first approximation -
| many measures result in poor targets, and care needs to be
| taken when turning a measure into a target. Even then it
| usually becomes a worse measure.
|
| > The faulty assumption here was that the only way to hand
| in a rat's tail is by killing them.
|
| More than that, it's an assumption that an increase in rat
| tails equals a decrease in live rats. Even if you kill a
| rat to get a rat tail, that doesn't necessarily hold true.
| It rewards those that breed 5 rats, release 4 and hand in
| the tail of 1. Killed rats would have still been a bad
| target. The true target was _fewer live rats_. Dead rats
| can be a reasonable measure, but as a target it has very
| risky outcomes.
| quench wrote:
| >Not really. It depends on the quality of the measure and
| any underlying assumptions. If the target is knowing who is
| the fastest then a simple stopwatch (measure) is 100%
| aligned with the target. So the measure becoming the target
| is completely fine.
|
| I am thinking of how runners all lean forward just before
| the finish line. This must slow their overall speed but
| gets a part of their body to the measurement datum slightly
| quicker.
|
| I admit its not a huge deviation between the measurement
| and the target but still it is an attempt to affect the
| measurement by means other than running fastest
| rondini wrote:
| I shouldn't be surprised given what website I'm on, but
| it's crazy that people will litigate the finer points of
| replacing human judgement of human arts rather than reject
| the premise outright.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes precisely. For reference my most AI/LLM pilled
| friends are also Desktop Linux enthusiasts, for whatever
| that's worth..
| pixl97 wrote:
| Why is this crazy? Should we toss the entire field of
| science and go back to judging reality based on our
| feeling and perceptions?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Gymnastics is not a science. Judging "good" sports is
| purely an aesthetic choice.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a science to gymnastics. However the judging is
| only minimally based on the science and mostly
| subjective.
| lupire wrote:
| If something is wrong, there should be an articulable
| reason Find it.
| lupire wrote:
| That gets you people doing weird tricks to game the
| starting block and the finish line, which are artificial
| distractions from "fast running".
| saghm wrote:
| Only accepting entire rat bodies wouldn't necessarily work
| either; see the "cobra effect" that supposedly happened in
| colonial India:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
| ta1243 wrote:
| There's a target of 9.8 seconds (or whatever) for the 100m
| sprint, there's a bunch of rules around things like
| windspeed, but it's still a good measure to find the "fastest
| man alive" despite being a target.
| DRAGONERO wrote:
| I think you mean "best shoe"
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| You could wear the best most advanced shoes, and I bet
| you still couldn't beat Usain Bolt wearing $10 sneakers.
| jcalx wrote:
| Two years post-retirement, wearing sweatpants and
| sneakers, he (albeit unofficially) tied the fastest
| 40-yard dash time at the NFL Combine:
| https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2818947-watch-usain-
| bolt...
| cedilla wrote:
| Isn't the measure already the target?
| kevinwang wrote:
| Another suitable maxim here is "We shape our tools and then
| our tools shape us"
| stcredzero wrote:
| _I 'd be concerned about, it's something I'd call Wii-Sports-
| ification_
|
| AI might be able to radically change sports like fencing and
| HEMA. I could see the development of match judging AIs trained
| by experts. Anyone who has fenced knows the frustration of the
| fallibility of human judges.
|
| It's also possible that AI judging could benefit martial arts,
| bringing them closer to their practical roots, by counteracting
| the rule-gaming competition rules. ("Sport-ification" of
| martial arts.) Instead of allowing just any touch to count as a
| point, only hits with enough body structure to allow damaging
| force could be allowed.
|
| Many HEMA competitions try to implement this, but expert
| calibrated judging AIs would make this an order of magnitude
| better.
| o_nate wrote:
| I was going to mention fencing. Thats a sport where there's a
| massive amount of judgment required from refs which is fairly
| opaque to non-specialists.
| affinepplan wrote:
| as a former gymnast, I'm going to say I find this concern super
| unlikely
| chongli wrote:
| _they 'll figure out how to best trigger the detection of each
| move, and how much flexing of the toes, bending in the back and
| overall effort is just enough for the machine, and it's going
| to change the look and feel of the sport._
|
| I remember watching Olympic diving years ago and the
| commentator was making a big deal out of the fact that the
| divers were spreading their knees apart (apparently a flaw) but
| that the judges weren't picking it up because their viewing
| angle on the dives didn't allow them to see it. So the divers
| were taking advantage of a literal blindspot in the human
| judging to make their dives easier to perform.
|
| So really, changing to AI judging is just going to change what
| the competitors optimize for in an arbitrary way. It's not
| going to fundamentally change things.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| If anything, having computers do the judging with cameras
| setup from all directions with human judges available to
| override in particularly suspect rulings is _more fair_ to
| everyone and everything involved: The players, the
| spectators, the judges, and the game.
|
| It will take away most of the fun(?) of arguing a judge's
| ruling and gaming them, but I will fundamentally always
| support making games fairer and objective'er.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Right, we're heading to a world where everything is
| "perfect".
| mywittyname wrote:
| > more fair to everyone and everything involved
|
| I hope so. But I suspect a racial bias of some kind will be
| uncovered.
| beambot wrote:
| At least with an AI-based system, it's presumably consistent
| across performances & devices and can be used during training.
| While not "objective" per se, it's certainly better than an
| human judge that is none of these things.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| The concept of judging has always included some form of bias.
| There is no such thing as an impartial judge. AI won't change
| this, it will just include a different set of biases. I'd
| rather be judged by a human than a machine.
| thfuran wrote:
| >it will just include a different set of biases
|
| One that many people who would admit the possibility in a
| human judge will likely insist cannot be present.
| pfisherman wrote:
| > Consistent across performances and devices
|
| LOL! I think the assumption that an ML system would be robust
| across these contexts is not well founded. Things as
| innocuous as the lighting, background, or placement of
| athletic tape could easily wreck a model like this.
|
| The thing about human judges is that the modes of failure are
| pretty well known at this point; and human perception and
| visual processing is pretty robust to perturbation.
| josefresco wrote:
| The people that play Wii sports are not the same people that
| play professional sports. While I agree AI will be used to
| optimize routines, I highly doubt it will digress to the "I can
| play Wii tennis while laying down and only flicking my wrist"
| level. Nor do I think the "AI" sensors being used are as crude
| as a cheap, consumer focused Wii remote released over 15 years
| ago.
| rurp wrote:
| > The people that play Wii sports are not the same people
| that play professional sports.
|
| Right, professional athletes will go to much greater lengths
| to exploit a scoring sytem if they can get an edge from it.
| The AI sensors might be much better than a Wii, but that
| won't fix the core problem because they will be studied and
| gamed much more diligently.
| thfuran wrote:
| I, for one, would quite like to see what sort of bizarre
| adversarial flailing technically counts as a perfect
| performance. If we can get one totally surreal Olympics out
| of it, I'd call it a win.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Watch Olympic Sabre fencing. There's all kinds of wild
| flailing that people do in that sport. All that really
| counts is that the hit registers. So bunny hopping
| towards your opponent flailing that sabre wildly is a
| perfectly valid tactic.
| divan wrote:
| There is a deeper and largely overlooked problem with sports
| judging, especially in the sports with artistic component (like
| gymnastics or figure skating) - Goodhart's effects. Goodhart's
| effect stands for "when the metric becomes a target it stops
| being a good metric". As soon as you make measurement part of the
| reward system, it changes the whole system.
|
| Take figure skating as an example. Since 2006, ISU has introduced
| a similar judging system - IJS - that uses points for elements
| and an increasingly complex code of rules on how to assign those
| points. Each element has a so-called "base value" and judges
| determine GOE value in the range from -5 to +5 for each element.
| The computer averages that and takes trimmed mean to produce the
| final points for the element.
|
| Those base values and points are logically assigned by the
| complexity of elements. More complex elements cost more. Great
| skaters can perform more complex elements. Sounds logical, right?
|
| What has happened, though, is that using these points as a target
| has changed the way how skaters train. Why spend time learning
| "easy" elements that give little points? All time must be spent
| now learning "complex" elements that give more points. In a way,
| before, IJS skaters were chasing overall greatness; now, they
| chase points.
|
| "Skater's greatness" - whatever that means - is hard to define,
| let alone measure. The ability to perform complex jumps was a
| consequence of it, not a cause. Using points as a metric changes
| the whole system of training, and a new generation of skaters can
| perform insane quads (often because of pre-puberty body sizes,
| though), but no one would call them great skaters.
|
| I'm not even starting with how these points affected artistry.
| "Program components" (PCS) that should measure artistry are
| practically a joke now. You basically can multiply jump scores by
| some constant and get PCS. [1] All skating programs look the same
| now and are very predictable because of points maximization.
|
| Back to AI. The rules for figure skating become more and more
| complex each year in order to duct-tape the constantly emerging
| issues. Many judges admit that complexity is so high that the
| human brain can't even possibly apply them in real time and has
| to resort to cognitive shortcuts. There are some early
| flirtations with using AI for judging figure skating [2], but
| nothing serious yet.
|
| As outlined in the "Categorized Variants of Goodhart's Law" [3],
| one of the major reasons of this effect in sports is not just the
| fact that elements != greatness, but the fact that there is no
| shared definition of what is a True Goal of this sport. What
| exactly judging system try to measure? What would constitute the
| best skater?
|
| Where there is no explicitly stated True Goal, any proxy variable
| used as metrics (like "ability to perform complex elements") will
| be far from good and will be distorting the system even further.
|
| Eventually, this boils down to the structure and decision-making
| in the international federation that governs this sport.
|
| And these things cannot be solved by AI. In a way, using AI is a
| yak-shaving for ever-increasing rules of an inherently wrong
| judging system.
|
| [1]
| http://libjournals.unca.edu/OJS/index.php/mas/article/view/2...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq_mv1eyZyA
|
| [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04585
| aubanel wrote:
| Thank you, great comment!
| paganel wrote:
| > In a way, before IJS skaters were chasing overall greatness,
| now they chase points.
|
| I've watched a figure skating routine recently for the first
| time in almost 20 years (I think the last show that I had
| followed was the 2006 Winter Olympics) and I was surprised to
| see how technical it had all become, how routine, there's no
| "artistry" left. It didn't use to be like this.
|
| Similar thing happened with the NBA, now everyone chases the
| 3-point shoots and in so doing whatever it is that had made the
| NBA one of the best sports shows in the world is losing its
| shine. In this day and age Jordan would be seen just as a
| gimmicky player.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I was surprised to see how technical it had all become, how
| routine, there's no "artistry" left. It didn't use to be like
| this.
|
| That's happening to, like, all of life, across the world.
| Beancounters have conquered the planet
| bomewish wrote:
| One 'solution' for this might be just to let viewers judge.
| Have some kind of live voting system, and then this might
| change skating incentives to align closer with the aesthetic
| preferences of the actual audience.
| divan wrote:
| And then 3000 Japanese fans outvote everyone else :)
|
| I'm looking into Eurovision judging as a curious example
| (half votes come from public and half from judges) :)
| Yizahi wrote:
| People will buy sim cards or accounts and automate spam
| voting.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Viewers are not impartial. Viewer voting would mean the
| winning team just becomes whoever has the most fans
| watching.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| That strategy is not without flaws either: once you let the
| public decide you create a system where the incentive is
| not "who skates better?" but rather "who can play the
| audience better?". The EuroVision Song Contest, for
| instance, has a well-known issue where the public often
| votes for/against a singer not because of their song but
| rather because of geopolitics [1]. And that's before we
| discuss organized voting rings.
|
| A related but less clear point is whether it's fair for the
| skater to be judged by people who have no idea about
| skating. If my code were to be negatively judged because
| (say) the person in charge judges the amount of comments
| rather than their content, I would probably be unhappy
| about that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest#P
| oliti...
| verisimi wrote:
| Voting? That will never do!
| PeterisP wrote:
| The original article already mentions 'leotard bias' as the
| problem that athletes from smaller countries face some
| prejudice in judging compared to the ones representing a
| superpower, and letting viewers judge would amplify that
| problem much more - it wouldn't even be about what show/PR
| the athlete puts on to the audience but highly influenced
| by global politics and what their country's leadership
| does.
| kevinwang wrote:
| > Similar thing happened with the NBA, now everyone chases
| the 3-point shoots and in so doing whatever it is that had
| made the NBA one of the best sports shows in the world is
| losing its shine. In this day and age Jordan would be seen
| just as a gimmicky player.
|
| No part of this is true or even really makes sense.
| paganel wrote:
| A guy like Curry is definitely quite true. He wouldn't have
| been a star back in the early '90s, a good player, maybe,
| but never a star.
| cyrialize wrote:
| I am trying to see where you are coming from with this
| comment.
|
| Are you saying that Curry wouldn't have been a star due
| to how they played in the 90s? Or are you saying that
| Curry wouldn't have been a star because 90's players are
| much better?
|
| If it's the latter, I 100% disagree with this.
|
| The 90's definitely did not focus on 3-point shooting
| like there is today, but Curry has so much more going for
| him aside from his 3-point shot.
|
| I very much do not like the Warriors, and I'm quick to
| call out that the whistle is in his favor during the
| regular season (especially with moving screens) - but
| even I can recognize his skill. Additionally, refs
| enforce rules much more during the playoffs, and he's
| still won rings.
|
| Curry's off ball movement is phenomenal. Numerous players
| have talked about how hard it is to guard Curry because
| he has so much stamina. Additionally, he's in his 30s now
| and has had some of his best seasons for his career.
|
| If you're saying that the play style of the 90s would
| have held him back - I agree with that. I like the NBAs
| current style of fluid, "positionless" play over the 90s
| more rigid adherence to roles. The current NBA of today
| lets so many more players shine, especially dynamic bigs.
|
| Kareem has talked about this as well when watching
| Giannis play. I can't find the quote, so this is a
| paraphrase - but he was remarking how back in his day if
| you were tall you had to play center, and you were never
| allowed to practice other skills.
|
| Today's game, you have people like Jokic - a dynamic big
| who can facilitate, defend, AND shoot 3s. I love to see
| it.
| cyrialize wrote:
| I 100% agree. The dominance of 3-point shooting has
| stretched the floor, causing offense to be much more
| dynamic.
|
| Jimmy Highroller [0], has a very good video on this where
| he shows that 2-point shots have become much more valuable
| now due to 3-pointers.
|
| To be part of a starting 5 you typically have to have the
| capability to shoot 3s - putting defenders in a difficult
| spot. You could guard the floor to prevent a 2, but that
| opens you up for a 3. Most people defend for a 3, so many
| people now are going in for a 2.
|
| I do think in the current NBA we took too much away from
| defenders. Most of that could be fixed with refs enforcing
| rules against foul baiting, allowing defenders to be more
| physical, etc. Refs actually do this during the playoffs, I
| think they should do it for the entire season. There are
| some good rules changes I've seen as well, like 6 in the
| key instead of 3. There's a good video from Rusty Buckets
| that goes over this [1].
|
| I don't want to get rid of the X second in the key rule,
| because then teams would just have bigs sit in the paint. I
| think that would make everyone focus on 3-pointers even
| more.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/@JxmyHighroller/videos [1]:
| https://youtu.be/2E0kHY0vMQY?si=3EA3UqSGKdThF3bK
| cyrialize wrote:
| I mentioned this in other comments in the thread, but I agree
| with you a tiny bit in regards to offense - this video goes
| over it quite well by Rusty Buckets [0]. I also go over how
| 3-point shots have made 2-point shots more valuable.
|
| I very much disagree with your Jordan comment. I think MJ
| could develop a 3-point shot. If anything, I think he could
| have shined even more in this day and age .
|
| Today's NBA is more dynamic and "positionless" than previous
| rigid coaching, giving rise to players that would have
| otherwise been forced to play a role. Jokic & MJ, Haliburton
| & MJ, or even Sengun & MJ would be scary.
|
| All amazing passers that could feed the ball to MJ, but also
| put the offense in a bad spot. If you guard MJ, then Jokic,
| Haliburton, Sengun, etc. could all shoot a 3 if left wide
| open.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E0kHY0vMQY
| vladms wrote:
| Very nice explanation of situation, but I think we could go
| even further.
|
| You agree that "Skater's greatness - whatever that means - is
| hard to define", but I would say that the problem is then the
| idea of competition for this sport and not "how you judge" /
| "how you measure".
|
| There is no inherent need of competition for every sport in my
| opinion. There can be prizes, juries, etc, but if people would
| accept that in the end it is subjective might make it easier
| than overly complex system to rate "fairly" something unclear
| (doubt anybody would want to put rules on how you rate a film
| for an Oscar - they just know it is "fuzzy").
| divan wrote:
| Absolutely. Competition is just an incentive structure for
| athletes. Even the word "competition" stems from the Latin
| words "com" and "petere" and means "strive with". Not "strive
| against". Strive with. We just need other humans to challenge
| us when we're don't feel challenged enough or intrinsic
| motivation doesn't justify the time/effort being spent.
|
| So, again, the goal of the competition is to incentivize
| athletes to show their best. Accidentally, we need some way
| of comparing results here, and that's where the judging
| system comes into play. It has (or rather should have) a nice
| bonus of giving feedback to the athletes on what to improve
| upon.
|
| Unfortunately, the majority of people in sports equate sports
| with competitions. Even some definitions of sports contain
| clauses like "...in a competitive fashion...". They strongly
| believe that without competition, there is no sports
| component.
|
| Yet, every four years, the world rediscovers a unique
| Norwegian sports policy for children. [1][2] They banned
| competitions for kids till the age of 11 in the late 1970s.
| You can have competitions, technically, but you are
| prohibited from ranking kids and publishing results with
| rankings. That, of course, is based on the studies of the
| reasons behind drop-out from sports rates and the science of
| motivation (self-determination theory, mainly). As a result,
| Norway has 1st rank in medals in the Winter Olympics and 9th
| in both summer and winter (they even won gold in beach
| volleyball!) and the highest sports participation rates in
| the world (9 out of 10 kids and 7 out of 10 adults, I
| believe). Sports != competitions indeed.
|
| Another example I like is Magnus Carlsen refusing to
| participate in the Worlds Chess Championships for the 11th
| time because it simply doesn't challenge him anymore. [3]
| Again, competitions are not about "finding who's the best"
| (that's a byproduct). It's about challenging to show an
| athlete's best. In the case of Magnus it failed to achieve
| this goal.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/03/03/norway-
| is...
|
| [2] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/olympics/article-
| norw...
|
| [3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11034789/Magnus-
| Car...
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| Great point on competition in schools. The competitive
| focus of sports in schools rewards those that are already
| athletically gifted while shaming and discouraging the
| mediocre.
|
| That's great if the purpose of PE is to create elite
| athletes. If the point is to encourage a healthier
| population by instilling an appreciation for sport and
| physical activity in kids it's an abject failure. Kids that
| are already good at sports love PE, while less gifted kids
| develop a disdain for sport and by adulthood have often
| dropped all sports and exercise.
| divan wrote:
| Yes, and it's not just in schools.
|
| Drawing from SDT (self-determination theory), one of the
| main predictors for motivation is a psychological need
| called 'competence' (perception of whether your actions
| lead to the feeling of growth or accomplishment).
| Different actions and situations can send either a
| positive competence signal to a person (and increase
| motivation) or a negative one (and decrease motivation).
| These things are measurable.
|
| The main issue with competitions is that they send
| positive competence signal to one person (winner) and
| negative to everyone else. Like you trained for months,
| and now you've lost. This leads to increased dropout
| rates in sports, which are especially pronounced in kids.
| Norwegians asked the question - instead of spending money
| and effort to try to engage people and kids in sports,
| maybe we should ask a question, 'Why do they drop out in
| the first place' and prevent those? Competitions came as
| one of the strongest predictors of dropping out of
| sports, hence the policy.
| vladms wrote:
| Depends on the competition format a bit. You can also
| have rankings and while they are not ideal either,
| probably it will not be as bad as "send positive
| competence signal to one person (winner)". For example if
| you do a single elimination tournament of course people
| eliminated in first round will get bored and not
| interested (you can't even make a proper ranking)
|
| Focusing on winners only is a societal choice though. I
| have met people (in countries were a lot of people like
| doing sport) that were practicing a sport and joining
| competitions for years even though they were not very
| competent in that sport - because it was their hobby and
| they just enjoyed being there.
| divan wrote:
| Yes, and we're talking about statistically measurable
| things. There is plenty of room to experiment with
| different reward systems in competitions. For example, in
| Finland, there is an alternative figure skating judging
| system for kids' competitions, and they have medals (1,2,
| and 3 place), but everyone else is the rest. Thus they
| send a positive competence signal to the winner and a
| relatively weak negative competence signal to others
| (i.e. no one is labeled "worst", plus everyone gets some
| prize reward).
|
| Tennis' Play&Stay program for kids under 10 years old is
| also a good example - they use different tournament
| structures, so no one feels like they lost.
| somenameforme wrote:
| This has not been my experience in sports, not even
| remotely so. I was never once shamed for the sports I
| sucked at. Quite the opposite my teammates were always
| there to try to help me out and help me generally
| improve, even when I was playing shamefully poorly. There
| is a _huge_ amount of bonding in sports, team and
| individuals, because you all go through the training
| together, losses together, and of course also the wins.
| School sports also have generally divisions: typically
| varsity, junior varsity, and then intramural. There 's
| something for everybody.
|
| If anything, the hardest part about sports is that you
| have to be the sort of person who can try their hardest,
| compete, lose and then use that as motivation to further
| improve yourself. Do you know how it feels to give
| something your all, and then fail - all in front of
| hundreds of people counting on you? And then come back
| from that? It's not easy. Behind any champion you're
| going to see a lot of pain and loss that they had to
| overcome. It's not like you're born a champ and
| everything is just easy. People of course are not equal,
| but the struggle is something we all deal with, and
| sports really helps with that.
| divan wrote:
| It's awesome that you have this experience.
|
| So, to be clear, competition - with rewards, prizes, and
| medals - is a form of extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic
| motivation is often very powerful (gun at your head -
| also an extrinsic motivator - will motivate you to do
| what's asked). The problem, though, is that it's short-
| lived.
|
| So if you were a sports minister who tries to maximize
| people's involvement in sports (at all ages), you would
| prefer to have more intrinsic motivation to sports,
| rather then extrinsic.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I laughed out loud the first time I heard the band name
| "Gym Class Heroes" because I instantly identified with
| part of what you said in terms of some kids hating gym
| class.
|
| On the other hand, I think that there are kids who are
| coordinated/sporty/physically talented and just as we
| celebrate and nurture the academic talents of
| academically talented kids, I think it's good to
| celebrate and nurture the talents of physically talented
| kids. Not everyone is going to excel at academics and if
| we steer schools to only encourage excellence in certain
| areas, I think we risk discouraging those who excel in
| other areas from feeling good about themselves.
| bigbluesax wrote:
| I don't even think it's a good strategy for creating
| elite athletes. Can we really determine someone's "elite
| potential" by how good they are as a young kid? If one
| kid has parents who took them skating a couple of times
| and the other didn't, the first one is going to
| absolutely destroy the second in a competition, but does
| that really tell us anything about how they will perform,
| 10 years down the line at the olympics? Yet we filter out
| anyone who doesn't conform to this standard.
| divan wrote:
| True. Traditional (and still popular) beliefs that sports
| talents can be identified early are questioned a lot
| within the sports science community. [1] Canada has
| implemented a scientifically-based LTD (Long-Term
| Development) model of sports development [2], and while
| it's based a bit on concepts of optimal windows of
| trainability (like the age where flexibility is trained
| best), it draws on the fact that everyone's journey in
| sports is unique. This non-linearity is also a basis of a
| modern coaching science known as the Constraint-Led
| Approach (CLA) [3] - it's basically a non-linear pedagogy
| applied to motor skill acquisition practices.
|
| [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.20
| 20.0066...
|
| [2] https://sportforlife.ca/long-term-development/
|
| [3] https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-
| Constraints-B...
| somenameforme wrote:
| As a tangent on the Magnus thing, he didn't stop because it
| doesn't challenge him anymore. His title defenses against
| players of his generation have all, except his most recent,
| been less than convincing. 2 of them he only won in
| tiebreaks. In the most recent match, he was playing against
| an opponent known for extreme psychological instability and
| who had never competed in a world championship before. They
| played 5 great draws, then his opponent lost one razor thin
| (and extremely long) game and blew up. Basically, Magnus
| is/was well on his way to losing his championship, and I
| think he wanted to go out undefeated.
|
| This is further emphasized by the fact that the one
| opponent he was willing to play is a brand new player on
| the scene who is absurdly insanely good at bullet (1
| minute) chess, but has had _relatively_ mixed results in
| classical (bear in mind he IS a top 10 player), is prone to
| psychological issues, and is very young with 0 experience
| at the world level. He somewhat predictably ended up
| scoring 0.5 points away from last place in the candidates
| event - and that is who Magnus wanted to "challenge"
| himself with, like a cat challenging himself with a
| particularly fast mouse.
|
| ---
|
| Also, I was curious about the petere issue, as the Romans
| in particular took their competition quite competitively.
| Looking it up, it seems that it means many things such as
| attack, assail, aim at, etc. [1] But it does not seem to
| mean to strive, let alone with?
|
| [1] - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/peto#Latin
| divan wrote:
| Thank you for the insightful comment! Is there any good
| read on the subject?
|
| Re: petere, it's not about Romans, rather the original
| meaning that provides insight into the pure form of
| competition. There is a great book called "True
| Competition" by David Shields that explores this topic
| and tries to answer the question "How to make
| competitions more healthy so they don't deteriorate into
| something that destroys the original spirit of
| competition".
|
| It's also interesting that in English word "competition"
| is also used for business, economics, biology, and
| political sciences. In business, it's clear that
| competition is a tool to incentivize market players to
| pursue the highest quality of service at the lowest cost
| ("show your best"). Again, in monopoly/monopsony, there
| is no competition - we need other players for that - and
| no incentive to "show your best".
| Someone wrote:
| > There is no inherent need of competition for every sport in
| my opinion
|
| I disagree. Competition is a defining property of 'sport'.
|
| What's wrong with calling figure skating an art form? Nobody
| calls ballet or violin playing sports [1], but there are
| "prices, juries, etc" for them.
|
| I would split various activities in a group where objective
| measurements are more or less possible (they never fully are)
| and one where they aren't.
|
| The first would consist of:
|
| - games, where your opponent has significant influence on
| your behavior or performance (basketball, judo, billiards,
| etc). Basically, if you can play defensively, it's a game.
|
| - sports, where they don't (archery, skiing, all forms of
| athletics; I would include the jumping events, even though
| your opponent's performance may significantly affect your
| strategy. Etc.)
|
| The second would be 'arts'.
|
| [1] if you look at the modern Olympics, painting and other
| art forms were events at some time, but that, but even then,
| did people call those sports?
| vladms wrote:
| > Competition is a defining property of 'sport'.
|
| This requires a reference though. For example:
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sport
|
| does not exclude non-competition based physical activities
| from the definition of sport, to quote: "a game,
| competition, or activity needing physical effort and skill
| that is played or done according to rules, for enjoyment
| and/or as a job: ". Definitions might differ from
| dictionary to dictionary and language to language
|
| Your definition of games assumes an opponent (ex: Rubik's
| Cube would not fit), so I think it is not ideal.
|
| Overall I think we could just stick to existing definitions
| and just accept that some competitions are "subjective"
| (ex: gymnastics, etc.)
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Formal sports like artistic gymnastics and figure skating are
| doomed to degenerate into rigid attempts to maximize points.
| That's why we have disciplines like freestyle skating, where
| people can be creative. Unfortunately, there's less money in
| that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume what you see when there really isn't competition
| (aside from pleasing an audience such as professional figure
| skating demonstrations) is more emphasis on artistry and
| crowd-pleasing elements that look hard (OK they are) but are
| easier than other elements that are much more difficult but
| largely indistinguishable by the average viewer.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Now that figure
| skating has become more of a sport and less of an art
| discipline, I like it a lot better. I never like the artistic
| part of it; I feel there's a time and a place for artistic
| endeavors, and a sports competition is neither. Honestly the
| more artistic elements always appeared completely out of their
| place to me, more distracting from the sport than adding to it.
|
| Skaters being rewarded for performing as difficult elements, as
| close to perfection as possible? I'm all for it!
|
| Same for gymnastics.
| divan wrote:
| That's perfectly fine, except something more is happening
| with figure skating. You see, rotating your body in the air
| and using your body for locomotion on the ice are two very
| different skills. What's happening now with figure skating is
| that one skills completely overshadowed another (the one that
| gives the word "skating" in the name of this sport). Modern
| skating champions can't do figures anymore (skating figures
| is what gives the word "figure" to this sport).
| Balgair wrote:
| Great to see a fellow lover of the sport here on HN.
|
| In Figure Skating, HNers should also be aware of the issues
| surrounding the current sport of figure skating:
|
| 1) Women's Free Skate is the marquee event in the winter
| Olympics. Not other event comes close in the ratings, and
| therefore, the ad buys.
|
| 2) Russia. Figure skating, and especially women's skating, is
| completely jumbled up by the interference of Russia. To sum up
| a very complex topic (poorly), women's figure skating currently
| has a strange and deep relationship with Russia's ruling elite
| and has had one for a few decades. That leads to _many_
| scandals and a lot of bribing of officials. It 's still playing
| out from the 2022 Olympics. The US team still has not gotten
| their medals from the team event.
|
| If you've not seen the end of the 2022 women's free skate, do
| yourself a favor and watch it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgiuo4lHFt4 . The meltdowns
| here are just so emblematic of everything that Russia is today
| and the travesty of the Ukraine war. The drama leading into
| this event and the drama coming out of it are much better than
| any reality TV show.
|
| 3) Declining interest. The laws of physics are not kind to
| figure skaters. The push for quads is only leading to the push
| for qunits and hexes. The effort required to advance the sport
| is going to be larger than time allows for training. At which
| point, probably sometime around the 2050 Olympics, the sport
| will be 'solved'. Combine this with the explosion of new sports
| full of frontiers to be broken, and figure skating will no
| longer be the marquee event. Training so intensely for such
| meager gains is going to be a hard sell to the boys and girls
| that are to be the medal winners.
| divan wrote:
| Great comment, thank you.
|
| I would just add that the russia thing is a direct
| consequence of the judge's system change (where russian
| officials are very much involved). The reason why russia was
| dominating medal standings for women (and not for men or ice
| dance), is precisely because russia could afford a stream of
| pre-puberty girls who win a medal at the cost of their
| physical and mental health.
|
| Also, needless to say, the russian sport system is still a
| direct copy of the soviet sport system, which was essentially
| created by Stalin when USSR first decided to participate in
| the Olympics in 1952 (guess, why USSR didn't care about the
| international sport before WWII). The way how sport is
| organized in russia goes against the sports autonomy
| principle that is sacred in democratic countries and is
| embodied in the Olympic Charter and European Sports Charter.
| araes wrote:
| There's also the issue that it was taking something that was
| supposed to just be a fun recreation, applying a score
| mechanic, applying competitive sport pressure, applying money
| rewards for certain results, and destitution for others,
| applying nationalism pressure, and then saying it needs to be
| "artistic." Except now they're mostly trying to skate "correct"
| for national glory and endorsements.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Where AI sports judging needs to happen fast is refereeing at the
| NBA and NFL level. Referees ruin games. Fans are turned off and
| always skeptical. If an AI can ref a game better, it'd be instant
| success for the leagues - not to mention getting rid of the
| unions who protect poorly performing referees.
|
| MLB is weird because everything needed to ref a baseball game
| does not need any advanced AI. MLB simply refuses to let robots
| ref games.
| smackay wrote:
| Be careful what you ask for. FIFA's Video assistant referee was
| supposed to banish controversial decisions in soccer matches
| forever. Instead, they simply replaced one form of
| controversial decisions with another.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_assistant_referee
| dagw wrote:
| The NBA and NFL already have their own versions of VAR, with
| all the complaints and problems that the football version
| has.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| If people make mistakes watching the event for tens of
| seconds from multiple cameras with VAR, how could you trust
| the same decision made without it in a split second.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Top soccer refs get >96% of decisions right. That's enough
| for me. It's sport, it's not criminal justice or
| healthcare.
|
| I want the split second decision. It used to be that the
| ball would go into the net, you'd glance over at the
| linesman, see his flag down by his side, the ref indicates
| for a goal, the fans lose their minds. It would all happen
| in a second or two, now we have 4 minutes of video pedantry
| following every goal.
|
| This idea that soccer is a 'flowing' game with minimal
| stoppages is very important to fans.
| dagw wrote:
| _It would all happen in a second or two_
|
| Ideally AI and goal line technology should solve this. If
| the computer knows where the ball and all the players are
| at all time, then checking if the ball crosses the line
| or if anybody was offside leading up to the goal should
| be instant.
| walthamstow wrote:
| There are a thousand and one subjective reasons why a
| goal that was given by the on-pitch ref can and have
| recently been disallowed after review by the video
| pedants.
|
| Even offside has subjectivity, something we only
| discovered after we implemented video review. Could you
| accurately tell which pixel of shirt sleeve is an
| attacker's arm and which is shoulder? (Your arm can be
| offside because you can't legally score with it, shoulder
| vice versa)
|
| We already have goal line technology for the ball
| crossing the line, it's totally instant, the ref has a
| device on his wrist which vibrates.
| dagw wrote:
| _Even offside has subjectivity_
|
| It does today, but the whole point of the AI would be to
| remove that subjectivity. Offside would be whatever the
| AI said is offside. Not saying this would necessarily be
| a good thing for the game, but it would remove the slow
| video review process and let referees instantly call
| goal/no goal.
| erfgh wrote:
| VAR is not an AI system, it's just the referee watching the
| video replay. It could have been done 50+ years ago.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Has to be better than this happening:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5QlBHF6ib8
| walthamstow wrote:
| The prevailing opinion amongst soccer fans now is that we
| should go back to a single human referee on the pitch, not
| double down on technology.
|
| We tried it, it was shit, we lost the most important part of
| the game for fans (celebrating goals, of which soccer has few),
| let's go back.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| The technology fails, too. Here's a great example in hockey
| [1], where the match is over and the championship has been
| won, but only the shooter and the goalie know it. Hockey has
| a light and buzzer that go off if the sensors detect a goal,
| and it missed the most important one of that year.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy4UZbtxxkY
| dagw wrote:
| _it 'd be instant success for the leagues_
|
| I'm sceptical. An AI that could view the whole playing field at
| all time and instantly spot and call every rule infraction with
| 100% accuracy would pretty much ruin any game. Knowing when to
| ignore an insignificant rules infraction in favour of letting
| the game flow is part of being a good ref. Plus, as a player,
| trying to get away with some sneaky bullshit when the ref isn't
| paying attention is part of the game.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Players will adjust or the NBA/NFL would change the rules to
| better suit the capabilities of the AI.
| michael1999 wrote:
| The NBA would be a very different game if an AI called things
| by the book. The first season would be _hilarious_. Some games
| wouldn't go a minute without a call for travelling.
| cyrialize wrote:
| I disagree. Several rules are ambiguous, leaving the judgement
| to the ref.
|
| If anything, I think that refs need to be enforced more to call
| games a particular way. The officiating that occurs during the
| playoffs is much better, and IMO should be done that way during
| the whole season rather than only the playoffs. Refs let
| defenders be more physical, they call more rule violations,
| etc.
|
| I'd fear that an AI ref could possibly lead to even more fouls
| being called, since a ref could miss things depending on where
| they are in the floor. More fouls being called would just slow
| down the game.
| nhinck3 wrote:
| I'd be more than a little worried that AI might start picking up
| on the wrong signals (like uniform or skin colour) to assign
| points.
| penjelly wrote:
| this is fine with me, but it shouldnt replace the existing panel,
| instead augment the panelists with it. It could analyze the
| rotations and timings much more closely and replay/study it at a
| more technical level.
| TimSchumann wrote:
| https://archive.md/sJrYj
| jerf wrote:
| This is a specific issue of a general problem of AI/computer
| judging, where humans think they're judging on specific criteria,
| and write it into the computer, without ever taking a moment to
| ask whether that's actually what they want.
|
| I use speeding in vehicles a lot. The point of a 55MPH speed
| limit isn't really that cars should be going exactly 55MPH at all
| times. It's an approximation of a complex situation that could
| handle only one number. But it's not actually a law of physics.
| Rigidly handing out tickets for people doing 56MPH is missing the
| point of speed limit. (As are many of the "You're doing X over"
| flashing signs, generally put in places that are precisely _where
| the speed limit is too low_ and what people are doing is actually
| _fine_.)
|
| Now that we finally have the technology to determine whether a
| gymnast was or was not one millimeter over some line, the
| question should be raised, is that what we _actually_ want to
| judge on? Because just because we humans _thought_ we were
| judging on that, just because we _thought_ that 's what we
| wanted, is it _really_?
|
| It is this examination step that has been missing in every rush
| to insert computers into some judging system. We thoughtlessly
| reify accidents of history and what used to be easy to judge. At
| least in the case of gymnastics we're not going to send anyone to
| jail because of such thoughtlessness, but the sport could be
| destroyed. In the end, it still needs views, however abstracted
| the sports may seem to be from that, and after the novelty wears
| off, seeing humans out there competing for the most robotic and
| soulless performances runs the risk of gradually, but steadily,
| destroying all support for the sport.
|
| Now, personally, I'm not sure this wouldn't be a net gain for
| humanity in this particular place. But it's certainly not what
| the gymastics community as a whole wants and they really need to
| slow down and apply some thought to what they _really_ want
| before they let someone reify that into code.
|
| They won't. Nobody else is either, for things far more important
| than this. But they _should_.
| fabioz wrote:
| Particularly, I'd say that it would be awesome and could save
| sports which are graded based on such rules as the current
| state of affairs is pretty appalling (I hate seeing
| competitions which are graded based on subjective things and
| judge biases, for me it's the opposite -- such biases make
| seeing these sports maddening for me up to the point that I
| prefer not watching at all as I'm 100% sure it's unfair from
| the start).
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| I agree with your overall point, although there are reasons why
| we use hard cutoffs like that: they are objective. If somebody
| is traveling at 55 mph on a straight highway, on a clear warm
| sunny day, they can be sure[0] they aren't breaking any laws.
|
| Everybody recognizes it's not perfect; but in reality a cop
| isn't going to a write a ticket for 56 in a 55 (unless they
| have some ulterior motive). They might write a ticket for
| dangerous driving at 45 if the conditions are bad enough.
| There's still some human element, but we try to minimize it
| because it creates an opportunity for corruption and inequality
| in enforcement of laws.
|
| In the case of sports the judging is supposed to have a human
| element, but the judges are supposed to only care about the
| performance and routine and not stuff like the nationality of
| the gymnast.
|
| Which is an unrealistic hope frankly. So pick your poison;
| either we take subjective human judgement and accept it will
| wanted and unwanted subjective elements, or we do this stuff
| and remove subjectivity.
|
| [0] There's always measurement error but that's a separate
| issue.
| maxglute wrote:
| Computer vision determining if a ball touches the line, or which
| body part crosses the line first seems fine. Judging artistic
| merits not so much. If this like 3d capturing the entire routine
| and analytically evaluating difficulting based on some
| biomechanical formula them maybe. Otherwise I'd rather biased
| judging be limited to people / geopolitics than whichever vendor
| writes the code. Or artistic elements need to weigh down /
| eliminated.
| kbos87 wrote:
| I feel like the obvious effect of this is that gymnastics becomes
| all about testing against and optimizing for an algorithm. That
| sounds sterile and lacking any of the romance (best word I can
| think of) that goes into physical competition. Then I remind
| myself that optimizing for the opinions of judges is the status
| quo. Judges that are susceptible to wild bias in all sorts of
| undetectable ways. This will change the sport for sure, but I
| can't say that I think it will be all bad.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| In discussing AI they lament bias. In discussing human judges
| they laud the fact nationality and body shape and the judges seat
| position plays a role. So, when a machine is biased it's a
| problem but when nationalism, racism, etc is rooted in a human
| judge it's a feature? Technology really shouldn't be written
| about by journalism majors.
| Kalanos wrote:
| great! now the gymnasts won't have to sleep w the judges, and the
| judges won't be subject to political pressure
| ahaferburg wrote:
| How accurate is this? There's a video embedded in the article.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CinAYBZYANg
|
| To me it looks very shaky, e. g. at 0:20-0:25. It seems like
| they're not using an underlying physical model that takes
| momentum into account. Also it looks like the system is
| interpreting the movement of the ponytail as head movement.
| rasz wrote:
| >It became official in 2017, when the FIG formally announced its
| collaboration with Fujitsu
|
| Does FIG have powers of prosecution like UK Postal Office? Asking
| for a friend.
| kouru225 wrote:
| I honestly feel like what AI is really doing is just clarifying
| what we're actually doing. This whole article reminds me of my
| reaction when I first saw chatgpt write an essay.
|
| I immediately recognized that this essay would've been accepted
| by my teacher when I was a kid, and then remembered just how
| useless I thought essays were back when I had to write them. It
| feels like, with AI, I had proof that these essays were just
| "busy work" rather than anything else. As a student, I was just
| taking the prompt that my teacher gave me and expanding it into
| an essay, and there was no information in the essay that wasn't
| already in the prompt itself. Why is it useful to take something
| that could be said in a single sentence and say it in 5 pages? I
| wasn't encouraged to think about the book I was writing the essay
| about because my thoughts were seen as secondary to doing the
| technical work and simply copying the style and format of the
| essay, but now, with AI, that part had been automated and all
| that education was for nothing.
|
| It seems like Gymnastics really is, at it's heart, a very
| technical act. Your goal is to achieve perfect normal angles for
| some reason. But as robots begin to dispel the haze around
| technical work, we stop being so interested in technicality. You
| can see it as an attack if you're really invested in that
| technical stuff, but really you gotta ask yourself why you were
| so interested in it in the first place.
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