#15: AI in Sports

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI unfiltered with me Ian Bowie and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom. Where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

I was just looking at my little formula one car sitting on the desk here. Now, I don’t know if you follow Formula One at all. I mean, I don’t really follow it, but I kind of have a passing interest

Michael Stormbom
Mika Häkkinen, is he still there? No, even I know that.

Ian Bowie
I mean, I used to be really into Formula One in the 1980s. So I’ve always had some kind of an interest in it. And of course these days what’s the point of a having a driver in the car anyway? Why not just have fully automated racing cars, and the best automated racing car wins the competition?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, why not? Indeed. And I mean, I think they’ve done it wasn’t an, you know, actual racing, but sort of like a computer game, but they did that anyway. So that there was an algorithm driving the car and then outperforming the human driver. So yeah, I mean, the next step is then just installing that in the in the formula one car and…

Ian Bowie
yeah, and then also you save an absolute fortune.

Michael Stormbom
You have to pay the algorithm.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, yeah. But wouldn’t it be quite interesting, wouldn’t it, or if you need to have a human being in the car? Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Well I mean there are those tournaments in virtual chess players, so they pit different sort of chess AIs against each other and see who does the best. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, so why not do it with racing cars? Yeah, why not? Yeah, electric racing cars.

Michael Stormbom
Electric racing cars, yes.

And then it’s really green.

It’s very green and…

Ian Bowie
And completely pointless. Maybe?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, well, I guess it becomes an exercise in who has created the best algorithm.

Ian Bowie
You could do that in so many different things. Couldn’t have different mechanized sports anyway.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, for sure. How about football if you have robot football players. Well, there are there is that robot football tournament, but not quite the same, is it.

Ian Bowie
I was thinking more about whether machines I was thinking like, for example, the bobsleigh and then you’ve got an AI controlled bobsleigh that goes down the Cresta run or whatever it is and wins.

Michael Stormbom
I suspect that would take away a little bit of the of the interest in the in the sport would it, because I mean, I think you could create you could make it very highly accurate. And I mean, isn’t it at the end of the day about making the least amount of mistakes in a way so…

Ian Bowie
You can’t, you still can’t control the ice. And you still got the runners on the bobsleigh that probably need some kind of human waxing or whatever. I mean, of course, you know, the AI probably knows the perfect line to take and those kinds of things. But of course when one bobsleigh has gone down, it’s made certain grooves in the ice, which will affect the next one to go. So the line of the first bobsleigh might not be the optimal line for the second bobsleigh, and so on.

Michael Stormbom
But if that has been taken into account when designing, creating the AI model, then of course it could…

Ian Bowie
If it has, you see what I mean, but again what you said about the car racing, it’s all about who’s created the optimal AI algorithm.

Michael Stormbom
Well, I think it would make for an interesting competition, but the competition will be about the minds of the creators in a way.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but I mean, isn’t it a little bit like that now in Formula One anyway, you know, isn’t it a little bit about… it’s the actual car, isn’t it? It’s about the financial resources of the people behind the car.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, so it’s the driver, it’s the car and it’s the pit crew and it’s a whole thing. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
But how much of it these days is really the driver. I mean, the driver sits there admittedly, the driver has control over the speed of the vehicle and also the direction of travel. But beyond that, from what I understand everything else is controlled by the pit crew. You know, that they can they can slightly adjust the suspension, they can adjust what’s happening in the engine. You know, there are many parameters. I believe that they actually have control over.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, so I’d say I mean, it’s a it’s a team sport in essence, then.

Ian Bowie
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I just wonder somehow, you know, in five years time or 10 years time, how relevant the driver really is going to be as well, you know, literally have a automated car running around the track. It almost becomes like Scalextrics.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, well, why not?

Ian Bowie
Bit pointless, really? But AI in sport.

Michael Stormbom
I think it’s an interesting..

Ian Bowie
Yeah, that’s definitely you know, how…

Michael Stormbom
Because I mean, I mean, one aspect to it is just pure data analysis. Well, in any sport, like for example, analyzing your opponents or so forth, and finding their weaknesses and finding your own weaknesses and so forth. So, you know, there’s that aspect, to be sure

Ian Bowie
And analyzing your own performance and analyzing, perhaps creating new training regimes. Yeah, possibly nutrition. So in actual fact, there’s another area I think, where perhaps AI is going to start taking over. You know, maybe the coaches and the nutritionists and all of these other sporting professionals need to also little bit watch their backs.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, especially when we are at the point where we have spoken about virtual workers in a previous episode, how about a virtual coach that…

Ian Bowie
Yeah, yeah, but why not? Yeah. Well, you know, why why not? I mean, if if performance improvement is basically data driven…

Michael Stormbom
For sure, I mean, of course, you can also then optimize the actual coach in terms of example, positive reinforcement and how you give feedback and that sort of thing. So really individualize it to the particular person so you don’t have to put up with the idiosyncrasies of that particular coach or whatever.

Ian Bowie
I mean, if you think about, for example, tennis, you can imagine or at the same kind of technology that…

Michael Stormbom
I try not to, but sure.

Ian Bowie
What?

Michael Stormbom
Think about tennis.

Ian Bowie
Okay, all right, fair enough.

Michael Stormbom
I’m reading Infinite Jest at the moment there’s a lot a lot of tennis in there. But anyway.

Ian Bowie
So you’re reading what?

Michael Stormbom
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Ian Bowie
In English?

Michael Stormbom
In English, yeah.

Ian Bowie
Okay. All right.

Michael Stormbom
There was actually only recently translated to Finnish. I think it would be a very challenging book to translate…

Ian Bowie
I think a lot will be lost in it as well. Oh, have you ever considered that it was maybe written by an algorithm as a joke?

Michael Stormbom
If there’s an algorithm that can create that then I think we are all screwed.

Ian Bowie
But no, going back to tennis, it’s in your funny book. So imagine, I mean, I don’t quite know how this works. But if they I think they a little bit do use AI, technology, maybe something similar to what they use for facial recognition. So what they’re doing is they’re looking at every single aspect of the tennis player in terms of their posture. How they hold the racket how they use the racket, and they can see that okay, right. So you holding the racket like that? Just a tiny little adjustment this way and suddenly you’ve got X amount more power and accuracy and duh-duh-duh.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I mean, I guess at the end of the day between those top players, we’re talking about pretty small margins. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. I mean, almost like, imagine if they could put a tennis player into an exoskeleton suit, or even just a suit you know, that then somehow measured every single movement, and then they could put that on a computer screen, and you could see it all happening. And imagine then, if even they could somehow create clothing that somehow controlled…

Michael Stormbom
Aah, so you don’t even need a tennis player, necessarily?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, this is what I’m thinking, you know, you’ve actually got a human being inside a machine, which just looks like tennis clothing. And you become unbeatable.

Michael Stormbom
Unless the other player also gets an exoskeleton

Ian Bowie
Oh, yeah, of course. And then yeah, mind mind you. I mean, I’ve always wondered if Venus Williams wasn’t a cyborg.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, well for example, in analyzing how other like it’d be for a big game if you’re, you know, you’re going to meet these players in the in the final then. Then analyzing before and like, how does that person, and then you can learn from it and then anticipate their particular? Yeah, I mean, if if, you know, if you’re able to know your opponent better, or at least have the analysis to back it up. So you can sort of when you see that, if he’s sort of telegraphing his moves, then certainly.

Ian Bowie
Absolutely. You know, there’s no better thing than a computer and the machine to do that is I don’t have something Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
The same applies to any number of sports

Ian Bowie
Yeah, any sort of combat sport or tennis cricket even, you know how, you know where the bowl is going to go? What he’s going to do, because you can see it? Yeah, where that where the batsman is going to hit because you can see it.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Or in football when you if you’e a goalie, and then a player comes and…

Ian Bowie
Yeah, that’s right. If he’s been analyzed, and yeah, immediately, he’s gonna go there. Especially when it comes to penalty kicks. Yeah, indeed. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
But of course, I mean, another another aspect of data analysis like optimizing your team roster. Why not tell what type of player you need? And yeah,

Ian Bowie
Yeah, well, they have these virtual football tournaments and they’re not tournaments, but they have some kind of virtual..

Michael Stormbom
You mean, those fantasy football.

Ian Bowie
I mean, imagine if you were the one who just had the algorithm, you’d hammer everybody else would…

Michael Stormbom
Create the ultimate team.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, absolutely. You just feed all the data in and it tells you immediately what you need to do, who you buy, who you transfer, who you play, who… Yeah, oh wow. I suppose they call that cheating.

Michael Stormbom
They… it might be called cheating, yes.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, but if it’s not, if it’s not banned in the rules, Thou shalt not use an AI algorithm in your fantasy football. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Well, you know, quite a lot of these games. Well, that’s, of course, a slightly different topic. These games, but usually there’s just like a ban on using bots and AI so they say, you don’t have to. So I don’t know how that goes with those fantasy leagues. But I would imagine that..

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. Yeah, it’s probably gonna become the 11th commandment. Isn’t that you know,

Michael Stormbom
Thou shalt not use AI.

Ian Bowie
That’s right. Yeah. Actually, one thing that just came to mind in the sporting world with AI, couple actually, a couple of things came to mind. If you think about when they film, sporting events, yeah, at the moment, they’ve got cameraman here, there and everywhere and sound crews and everything else. Would it be possible to at least partially automate the way in which they film for example, track and field events, where you actually have a fixed venue? So you don’t you know, you don’t have to be following or actually in any event that has a circuit or a track so we can have horse racing football, track and field, indoor sports, so that the cameras will be trained. I don’t know possibly using facial recognition to sort of follow the players and follow the action.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s already the case that they are using. Not necessarily for for tracking but rather for picking out the highlights. So rather deciding what to show to the viewer. So enhancing the viewer experience in a way.

Ian Bowie
So is that like, editing on the go?

Michael Stormbom
Editing on the go, yeah, so we’re picking out the sort of like the interesting stuff to show for the viewer.

Ian Bowie
And that’s all done by using AI?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I don’t know, to what level of automation but I mean, certainly there’s AI involved in it.

Ian Bowie
Wow.

Michael Stormbom
So yeah, I mean, really enhancing the user, or enhancing the viewer experience. Really.

Ian Bowie
All right. Okay, well, that’s actually pretty cool, isn’t it? I’m also a little bit thinking of for example, I I’m a big fan of the Isle of Man TT, the Tourist Trophy. And of course, because it’s such a big circuit, it’s a road circuit that goes around half the island. Filming it in its entirety is quite problematic. So you tend to just get the highlights, the best bits, but you would also think that possibly AI could play a part in maybe allowing the possibility to film a lot more of what’s going on around the circuit.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, well, I’m gonna it’s the same thing as picking out the interesting, interesting bits. So certainly using AI to determine what bits are interesting to show to the viewer. I think certainly but throughout, of course, you need to film the uninteresting bit as well. So the AI can decide which parts to show.

Ian Bowie
A lot of it is about being in the right place at the right time.

Michael Stormbom
Well, for sure, yeah. Aah o you mean, you would use AI to predict where the camera should be at a given…

Ian Bowie
For example. Yeah. over the over the years. I mean, the Isle of Man TT has been going since 1907. And I don’t know when they started filming it. But they must have race statistics for everything that’s ever happened.

Michael Stormbom
Well, yeah, to calculate the trajectory.

Ian Bowie
Well that’s right, absolutely.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I don’t know. But I mean, you could definitely use you could definitely use AI for that purpose, to predict where the camera should be. So that it captures the interesting moments.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Could it could it be used in things like engine optimization?

Michael Stormbom
For sure. And then I mean of course you could use it to to predict when you will need maintenance. So when you need to make a pit stop. Yeah, I’m sure they actually use it for that already. But then the other thing of course is like video referees, like during games.

Ian Bowie
Yeah but nothat they have that already done. Let me know if you think about tennis.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, like I mean, you can have an AI to make the calls. You don’t necessarily need a human to…

Ian Bowie
Need a human. So you have an AI shouting fault.

Michael Stormbom
Yes. With speech synthesis.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. That would totally change Wimbledon forever. I think yeah, that would

Michael Stormbom
make it interesting. And then at some robotic tennis players and it’s a… yeah, no, but you can you could in principle have a have a video referee that’s an AI.

Ian Bowie
Timing time judge.

Michael Stormbom
And a time judge. Yeah, possibly making more accurate calls then because it’s not up to human errors necessarily.

Ian Bowie
Well yeah, it was quite interesting. I actually just watched a documentary about the Isle of Man TT yesterday. And there was one guy and he was penalized 30 seconds, because apparently he was 0.6 kilometers an hour over the pit lane speed limit. And of course it cost him, he would have been second and he was fourth. Simply because of that penalty. And of course, his big argument was bad judgment call. Because it was a human timekeeper.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, so I mean, that could certainly be done more precisely then, I would think, yeah.

Ian Bowie
But of course, the other argument, of course, was 0.6 kilometers an hour in the pit lane, or you get penalized 30 seconds is a little bit extreme. Possibly.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Well, if those are the rules, then I guess.

Ian Bowie
Well, that’s what the the the head timekeeper said You know, he said, look you know, we’ve, we have a very thick file full of rules about this. And the timekeepers’, basically, word is final. So what else can I say? You know, that’s, that’s it. You can’t argue with this.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. So then if… in the future, you can’t work the ref anymore and you have to say that oh no, the AI is biased against me. There’s faulty data…

Ian Bowie
Well, that’s a possibility as well. Yeah. We’ve talked about AI bias in the past. Yeah. So it’s almost prevalent in everything, isn’t it? This bias. It’s anything that is programmed. by humans, is by its very nature, going to have some form of bias inbuilt into it.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And of course, the same applies to AI in the sense that of course, it’s data being collected and of course, usually humans either curating the data or creating the data or inputting data. So yeah, certainly.

Ian Bowie
So in actual fact, you can never avoid it.

Michael Stormbom
Quite difficult. Definitely. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
So if you if you think about, you know, AI, “I don’t like Team Honda”. Then anybody who’s riding a Honda is screwed.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, yeah. I think there would have to be some, I guess there would have to be some oversight into as to who..

Ian Bowie
That’s maybe a little bit you know, a bit obvious. Isn’t it? Really? All, you, know you…

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, sneaking in the data.

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Actually, I don’t think there’s any sport where it couldn’t be used, potentially.

Michael Stormbom
Maybe if it’s a sport about designing AI. Well, you can use AI there as well, if you want.

Ian Bowie
But also pastimes and things like Scrabble, I don’t see why not. But of course, there’s there’s an element of randomness in Scrabble, isn’t there? Because of course, it’s about the the tiles that you pick out of the bag.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, there’s an element of randomness. But, but still, I mean, if you have an AI with an infinite vocabuliary, not infinite but massive vocabulary…

Ian Bowie
No but of course, chess, obviously, I mean that there’s no randomness in chess, in chess. Chess is pure strategy. Yeah. And it’s just pure knowledge. Isn’t it really, to think ahead several moves.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, but I mean, if you want a sport with chance in it, or is it a sport, but, card games so for example, poker. Yeah, Because I mean, that’s a lot about probabilities and optimizing, optimizing your good luck and minimizing the bad luck. It’s, yeah, of course, what used to be a big part of poker was of course you’re reading your opponent. Yes. Which is obviously a bit difficult in online games, because you can’t see your opponent, but I mean of course, you can analyze their behavior, but..

Ian Bowie
Then it’s all about probabilities, isn’t it?

Michael Stormbom
It’s very much about probabilities, but also sort of analyzing how other people play. Yeah. So for example, do they play in an aggressive manner and bet when they have nothing? Or do they bluff X percent of the time and so forth? And how do they behave in specific scenarios?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, and I was just wondering if, if there’s even somebody using an AI algorithm right now, in some of these online tournaments? Because how do you know I mean, you wouldn’t, would you?

Michael Stormbom
I think they put quite a bit of effort in this trying to detect when someone is using… There’s heavy penalties like you can be banned for life and all those sorts of things

Ian Bowie
Is that right, yeah. I’ll tell you where AI would be absolutely perfect. Horse racing. I’m not talking about the kind of horse racing that happens in Finland, but in the UK. I mean, they even have a thing called a form book. It’s probably being used actually. And you can have this form book and you can go through and you can see the history of all the horses you know, and who their parents were and how they, how they performed and how this current horses performing and… It’s probably all online now.

Michael Stormbom
Just feed it and all the data and then yeah.

Ian Bowie
Wow. Now that that will be interesting, because then…

Michael Stormbom
Well, of course, it applies to all sorts of betting if you… yeah, why not?

Ian Bowie
Well, yeah, betting on football. Yeah. Anything actually. Where there’s a competition between two things or more. I wonder if such an algorithm already exists.

Michael Stormbom
If the data is there, then I’m sure that the algorithm exists.

Ian Bowie
The data is there. Absolutely. Yeah. I suppose the question is, is it legal? I mean, there’s still there’s still an element of randomness in horse racing. You know, on the day, the horse might not be feeling very well or the jockey might, you know, make a mistake.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, if you bet, bet over time, then on average, you should do

Ian Bowie
You should win. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, you should win on pretty much everything, shouldn’t you whether it’s football or horse racing, or?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, but I mean, of course, there’s been those like professional sports better around for…

Ian Bowie
There are plenty of them. But I just didn’t think they were that sophisticated. I thought they, they were relying on their own personal knowledge more than anything else.

Michael Stormbom
Well probably were before but nowadays, I would assume you reckon they’re not? Well, they I think it might be both, but I think it would be foolish not to use make use of the data if it’s available.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, absolutely. You know, some kind of predictive data system.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Because you’re I mean, you only need to be, you only need to be better than the average so to speak. Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Bowie
To be ahead of the game. Yeah. That’s interesting.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai