Stacker Sports- Day 81
684 sats \ 6 comments \ @grayruby 24 Feb Stacker_Sports
It's Saturday, thus it is poll day!
One thing that all sports fans can agree on is Refs/Umps/Officials suck.
Sometimes I think blaming the referee is just whining, sometimes it is justified and sometimes it is just fun.
In the coming decades I expect all leagues will to some degree phase out human officiating. Baseball seems to be at the forefront of this, as they plan to have some degree of robot umpiring in place for balls and strikes as early as next season. I am sure all leagues will at least eventually use AI to assist on replay reviews.
How far should automated officiating go? Should we eventually have AI monitoring from 50 angles every play/player and get everything correct to letter of the rule book? (that would be bad news for some NFL teams that hold on every offensive play- I am not naming names)
No Robots- Human error is part of sport25.0%
Some robots- Replay review/challenges50.0%
All robots- Get it right every time. 25.0%
8 votes \ poll ended
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50 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Feb
I fundamentally agree that officiating should be done by human judgement and my preference would actually be to abolish almost all replay.
However, that opens too much scope for officials to determine outcomes, so I think coaches challenges are fine and AI should be used to get reviews correct.
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32 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby OP 24 Feb
What if AI worked in the background and automatically overturned officials on certain calls?
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50 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Feb
There are a few cases where I was thinking about that. In cases where the call is a clear matter of fact (12 men on the field or offsides, for instance), then I like the idea of immediately reversing calls. I also like the idea of using AI when two officials disagree about what happened.
I might also be ok with using AI to only call egregious penalties that refs can't seem to see for some reason (the many sleeper holds and full nelson's used against Maxx Crosby come to mind).
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32 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby OP 24 Feb
I like the idea of auto reviews on certain calls. Why are we waiting for a quality control coach to check if they want to challenge and then the coach trying to throw the challenge flag before the other team rushes to the line to try and get the play in before the challenge.
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 24 Feb
The core problem with turning AI loose is the one you brought up: games would grind to a halt if every infraction were called. I'd be happy to see it used to reduce time spent officiating. One thing that just came to mind is spotting the ball and determining first downs and touchdowns, without making coaches challenge really bad spots.
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32 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby OP 24 Feb
Yes definitely could be advantageous in some ways but terrible in others. If an AI was calling penalties we might still be watching the superbowl.
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