The other referee: Artificial intelligence⚽ [HTC #51]
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Welcome to our 51st edition of Hold the Code (and our last edition for the Fall 2022 season). We’ve had an amazing season thanks to all of our new and returning subscribers. In our final edition, we talk about the role of technology in this year’s World Cup.
Though technology is no stranger in the World Cup, this is the first time semi-automated offside technology is being utilized in the tournament. As the Round of 16 progresses, this technology has already made a huge impact, undoubtedly making more accurate referee calls but also sparking controversy. In this article, we’ll take a deeper dive.
For the NU students who submitted an entry for our AI ethics crossword scavenger hunt, stay tuned until the end of the newsletter to see if you were one of our lucky winners! 🍅🌯
Happy reading!
History of technology in the World Cup
Unlike other sports, football has been slow to introduce technology to assist officiating, choosing to rely on human judgment as video replay would interrupt the flow of the match. The most notable flaw of this was the infamous Diego Maradona “Hand of God” goal in the 1986 World Cup. During this quarter-final match between Argentina and England, Maradona supposedly scored, and the referees awarded Argentina a goal. They later went on to win the match. However, fans worldwide viewing the match on television saw something the referees did not: Maradona had used his fist to hit the ball past the rival goalkeeper. This was illegal under football rules, but as it hadn’t been detected by the referees at that time, a goal was scored.
Introduction of VAR
In 2018, the lack of technology in the World Cup changed with the introduction of video-assisted referees (VAR) to help referees on the field make more objective calls, such as determining penalties, possession, and offside decisions. VAR officials are located in a room away from the match, but they view the match from 30 different camera angles. If they think they see something the referee didn’t call, they can suggest that they review it on the field monitor.
Though the use of VAR is not new in the 2022 World Cup, that doesn’t mean it’s been uncontroversial. Most recently, Japan’s winning goal was believed to have gone out of play by crossing the touchline before it was scored. However, after a rigorous VAR review, it was deemed to still be in play, and the goal was awarded to Japan, sealing their place in the Round of 16 and effectively sending Germany home.
Semi-automated offside technology in the 2022 World Cup
FIFA President Gianni Infantino: “At the FIFA World Cup in 2018, FIFA took the brave step to use VAR technology on the world’s biggest stage, and it has proven to be an undisputable success. Semi-automated offside technology is an evolution of the VAR systems that have been implemented across the world.”
The 2022 World Cup is unique in that, for the first time, semi-automated offside technology (SOAT) is being used to assist VAR and on-field officials to make faster and more accurate offside decisions. This AI-based technology consists of a sensor in the ball that constantly relays its position, while motion cameras underneath the stadium’s roof use machine learning to triangulate the relative positions of players at any given moment. Together, they automatically trigger offside alerts in the VAR room, where officials can then notify on-field referees.
However, subjectivity is not completely removed from decision-making as the technology is only semi-automated, so human referees make the final call. To communicate these decisions to viewers, the technology used 3D images to recreate the play and clearly show why the offside was ruled.
Controversy over the use of SOAT had already started less than five minutes into the opening match of the 2022 World Cup between Qatar and Ecuador. The goal that would have been the fastest World Cup goal ever was nullified by the referee using SOAT that revealed a player who assisted the perceived goal was off-side. In the ten minutes it took for the 3D image to be displayed to viewers, confusion was circulating around social media.
Despite the controversy, VAR and SOAT will continue being used in this and future World Cup tournaments. They’ve already played a large role in influencing which teams win and go home, but the role they’ll play as we near the finals remains to be seen.
Big data and football
In the modern day and age, data analytics are driving many of the decisions that have historically been left to humans, and football is no exception. Today’s elite teams are relying more and more on concrete statistics to help them hit their goals. From stadium cameras placed at every angle to motion-sensing vests, the data that these new technologies collect are used to help decide everything from training intensity to player transfers. Data can even be used to recommend which direction a player should kick the ball at any given point on the field. These decisions, which used to be based purely on a coach’s intuition, can now be supported by hard numbers.
“Big data has ushered in a new era of football,” said sports scientist Daniel Memmert. “It has changed the philosophy and behavior of teams, how they analyze opponents and the way they develop talent and scout players.”
Data analytics is not an entirely new concept in sports – baseball analysts, for example, have been collecting and deciphering their game data for decades. However, baseball is not nearly as complicated as football, where it tends to be much harder to figure out what effect each player’s moves have on the overall outcome.
That’s where computer vision comes in. Computer vision is a type of artificial intelligence that allows machines to analyze images and videos. For instance, it could be used to produce player statistics based on video footage of a game. With the help of computer vision, collecting data has become much easier, giving analysts a more complete model of the game.
“For a specific incident in the match, the model can produce thousands of different simulations about what could have happened instead,” said Ian Graham, Liverpool FC’s director of research “So, you can start to say something about how well an attacking move went in that period of play.”
As data analytics has become more popular in the sport, it has started to have a noticeable effect on how the game is played.
“If you look at any league in the world, the distance from where players have taken shots was much higher ten years ago,” noted data analyst Ravi Ramineni. “That all happened because data-analytics people have started saying: ‘Why are you shooting from there? It’s only a 2% chance!’”
The way we make decisions has changed drastically in the past few years. If this trend continues, these AI and data-driven approaches will only continue to grow in prominence, on the football field and in the wider world.
Scavenger Hunt Winners…
Thank you to everyone who played our AI ethics crossword scavenger hunt. We had 30 entries, and the first fifteen participants who submitted the correct answer are Carolyn Zou, Nathan Pruyne, Jason Jewell, Julianna Tia, Neel Shah, Michael Kim, Julia Greenberg, Zachary Gerstenfeld, Mark Li, Jasper Liang, Amy Guo, Patrick Jiang, Arthur Hu, Qi Qin, Yuhang Wu.
We will follow up in an email with further information about receiving your free Tomate order. We’re sorry that not everyone who submitted won, but nevertheless, thank you again for playing the game and being a part of this community.
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Written by Michelle Zhang and Zoey Soh
Edited by Ian Lei