Would you favor using AI for referees?

[Catfanlou]

I would. I think it takes the bias out Of the game and you can’t bribe a robot . No more Higgins or his buddies trying to screw UK or Cal.

I have long thought baseball was missing an opportunity to have lasers call balls and strikes .

Awfully hard for a coach or manager or fan to argue with AI calls.

 

[bbncal02]

I would. I think it takes the bias out Of the game and you can’t bribe a robot . No more Higgins or his buddies trying to screw UK or Cal.

I have long thought baseball was missing an opportunity to have lasers call balls and strikes .

Awfully hard for a coach or manager or fan to argue with AI calls.

 

[JonathanW]

I would. I think it takes the bias out Of the game and you can’t bribe a robot . No more Higgins or his buddies trying to screw UK or Cal.

I have long thought baseball was missing an opportunity to have lasers call balls and strikes .

Awfully hard for a coach or manager or fan to argue with AI calls.

I’ve thought the same thing for a long time about balls and strikes in baseball.

In basketball, because everyone is moving, it would take a lot of different camera angles for AI to be reasonably accurate.

 

[WildcatsAndBourbon]

I think basketball would be an extremely hard sport to adapt AI to, at least this point in AI development. I have however wondered why more robotic, computer, and AI technology hasn’t been used to officiate sports up until this point. Baseball would probably be the easiest of the major sports to switch to AI officiating. There’s huge potential to use it for certain aspects of football as well, such as determining the exact marker of forward progress.

My two guesses as to why none of this has been tried yet are: a) labor unions for refs will allow no such thing and/or b) sports are even more corrupt than most people already believe, and one of the biggest key cogs in that corruption are the refs.

 

[LineSkiCat14]

Just expand more on the review process and don't make officials accountable.

 

[ftp000]

I don't think our digital overlords will care about our preferences when they rule the world.

 

[Smashcat]

The game is so physical now. If it's too exacting you'd never be able to complete the game. Everybody would foul out.
Makes sense to determine balls and strikes.

 

[*CatinIL*]

I would. I think it takes the bias out Of the game and you can’t bribe a robot . No more Higgins or his buddies trying to screw UK or Cal.

I have long thought baseball was missing an opportunity to have lasers call balls and strikes .

Awfully hard for a coach or manager or fan to argue with AI calls.

But who controls the AI?

 

[Blueheart32]

The game is so physical now. If it's too exacting you'd never be able to complete the game. Everybody would foul out.
Makes sense to determine balls and strikes.

This ^. I would probably be for it if we’re possible, but I don’t see anyway with as much contact and movement as there is for AI to be accurate. It would make it impossible to play defense without being called for a foul. Same for calling traveling. Just too much movement going on. I would love to see travel, and block vs charge calls be more accurate somehow though. A lot of games have been decided at the end based on whether a block or charge was called, or nothing at all called when there should have been

 

[drcats2013]

Hell why not. Allen Iverson seems to have quite a bit of basketball knowledge. Just keep him out of the Georgetown games!

 

[Zissou87]

Hell why not. Allen Iverson seems to have quite a bit of basketball knowledge. Just keep him out of the Georgetown games!

I was waiting for this.

 

[chroix]

AI is so flawed at this point that this is not even possible much less practical. In the future, yes. Now, no.

 

[Catfanlou]

After a loss it would cut down on about half of the posts complaining about officiating.

 

[christophero]

The odds of that happening are approximately 3,725 to one.

 

[Catfanlou]

The odds of that happening are approximately 3,725 to one.

I stand corrected. Ha ha

 

[Rondoed]

AI is so flawed at this point that this is not even possible much less practical. In the future, yes. Now, no.

Glenn Greenwald was playing with some AI awhile back that had been infected with some woke programming and he was making it contradict itself and acknowledge its contradictions. I can just see something similar with Lebron being allowed to take 4-5 steps without traveling being called, Duke/ACC getting calls, etc.

 

[Steelman100]

There are drones with AI. It would absolutly work. But they would call a foul on every play. A combination would work. But for me half the fun is screaming at the refs

 

[Aike]

Glenn Greenwald was playing with some AI awhile back that had been infected with some woke programming and he was making it contradict itself and acknowledge its contradictions. I can just see something similar with Lebron being allowed to take 4-5 steps without traveling being called, Duke/ACC getting calls, etc.

Right. Then someone would hack the NBA AI to prove that it was intentionally programmed with bias. 70% of the public either wouldn’t believe it, or would just shrug their shoulders.

 

[JC CATS]

After a loss it would cut down on about half of the posts complaining about officiating.

Have you met our fans? lol

 

[the nail at the foul line]

If the calls are made incorrectly, it's Al's fault.

 

[westerncat]

Duke or Kansas would probably hack it.

 

[bucsrule8872]

Y’all have seen the Terminator movies, right?

This is how it all starts.

 

[UKhoopCat]

If the calls are made incorrectly it's Al's fault.

If these hamburgers burn, Al…I won’t be responsible.

Best show EVER.

 

[Lempface]

But who controls the AI?

You define the rules in a different manner and then the AI makes the determination. For example, forward progress, which right now is up to the discretion or the ref, with AI you define it, so .5, 1, 1.5 seconds after contact and the ball is not advanced.

So in order for it to work your rules have to be even more explicit but it can be done.

 

[Pulaski Cat Fan]

I'd sure be in favor of AI coaching instead of Calipari.

 

[DreadLox]

There'd still be people with chafed brains over disagreements about calls. People would quibble about the way the AI was trained, the accuracy and positioning of the sensors, refresh rates, lighting. Or whatever. I think the demand for perfection is a bit lunatic. Keep the refs. Just remember that what the referees are doing is trying to keep a fair game going. Not a perfect one.

 

[2Dope15]

Depends who starts the program for them.

 

[TFCats11]

The sports gambling industry bosses will never allow it😂

 

[BlueSince92]

With the currently popular neural net/stochastic parrot AI model, there is no guarantee the AI will work as intended and it is literally impossible for us to know how it does work. (It doesn't know how it works either. It can't know anything, only simulates decision making based on database entries paired with numerical connection strengths.)

Put a system like that in charge of reffing and you have a ref that either needs to be heavily policed (which wouldn't happen——how much are human refs policed now?) or a ref that is not following any rules.....or, more accurately, it would be following rules, they just wouldn't be the rules of basketball and no one would have any way of knowing what rules they were.

In principle I would be fine with an AI ref system that did apply exclusively human-type rules and reasoning, because that system could apply those rules and that reasoning faster and more consistently without partiality. ...As long as it was heavily policed and was paired with a robust appeal system that really did frequently get applied in retrospect to change game results as appropriate. You would need the policing even if the AI itself was designed perfectly, because of course the AI could still be hacked and there would be a LOT of financial incentive to hack it. Something like that is probably decades off at very best in terms of design, and possibly totally infeasible in terms of policing for all the same reasons human refs today are never policed worth a plug nickel. But if it ever actually could be done it would be the best solution possible and I'd be all for it.

 

[BlueSince92]

The odds of that happening are approximately 3,725 to one.

That went over so many heads.

 

[DraftCat]

I don't see how AI could official a basketball game.... baseball I understand and do not mind it.

 

[kybloo92]

After a loss it would cut down on about half of the posts complaining about officiating.

AI and a rigged system would then be the new target to go after.

 

[FFWhite]

Not ready yet but hard to believe it would not be better than the clowns the SEC has call games

 

[BGCATFAN2012]

We asked AI yesterday who would win a fight between a bear on cocaine and a raccoon on meth and it replied with thats sounded pretty interesting and they would have to gather more information.

 

[kybassfan]

I would. I think it takes the bias out Of the game and you can’t bribe a robot . No more Higgins or his buddies trying to screw UK or Cal.

I have long thought baseball was missing an opportunity to have lasers call balls and strikes .

Awfully hard for a coach or manager or fan to argue with AI calls.

Sure you can bribe a robot. Somebody feeds an AI an initial data set. AI can have prejudice bias. Worst part is part of the evaluation would be against human refs.

Not ready for prime time. By a long shot.

 

[shaudyshaud]

After a loss it would cut down on about half of the posts complaining about officiating.

Yeah until folks accuse the NCAA of controlling the AI

 

[jmw23712]

The odds of that happening are approximately 3,725 to one.

Never tell me the odds!

 

[travisbickle]

I’m all for it. You could train it on millions of hours of Duke flopping videos.

 

[THE_HOOK]

No.

 

[bigbluedon]

I would. I think it takes the bias out Of the game and you can’t bribe a robot . No more Higgins or his buddies trying to screw UK or Cal.

I have long thought baseball was missing an opportunity to have lasers call balls and strikes .

Awfully hard for a coach or manager or fan to argue with AI calls.

As long as they are not named Jamie Luckie, John Higgins or Roger Ayer’s etc I would say ok.