‘AI-powered judge’ takes boxing a step closer to the brave new world it appears to seek

I wasn’t sure which word to use until news broke about plans to have an artificial intelligence judge “in the ring” for the heavyweight rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury To sum up boxing in 2024. The word is this: man-made.

As time goes on, the sport of boxing appears to be moving closer and closer to being completely artificial, a prospect that represents utopia to some, though deeply dystopian to others. For some, the addition of “artificial intelligence referees” on Saturday will undoubtedly be seen as a sign of progress and the sport’s changing with the times. For others, however, it will mark the dawn of a brave new world and the latest attempt to unravel the stitches of centuries-old sport.

Turki Alalshikh, the man behind the experiment, seems excited about its potential, so that’s cool. Announcing the plan, he wrote on social media: “For the first time ever, artificial intelligence judges will oversee the competition. No bias or human error brought to you. ring. This groundbreaking experiment, which will not affect the official results, will debut on December 21 during the biggest competition of this century, #Usyk2Fury.

Of course, promoting a fight through gimmicks is nothing new, especially in boxing, it’s just that Alalshikh’s announcement post was a bit bleak, especially since it also mentioned an artificial intelligence judge ring. While Alalshikh now owns and quickly revives the magazine, and while it’s great to see it back in print, it’s equally strange to imagine the marriage of a boxing institution founded in 1922 with a moving object used in 2024, so far removed from human control and influence.

The good news is that Arasheh’s experiment is just a bit of fun for now and won’t have an impact on the outcome of Saturday’s game. His AI referee will simply be programmed to score all 12 rounds of Usyk vs. Fury, and will essentially be viewed as a test; an attempt to monitor how accurately non-human devices can score points in a boxing match.

If it stays there, that’s fine; let Arashih have his fun. One can’t help but wonder, however, how much of the appeal of hypothetically ditching human judges has to do with accuracy and how much has to do with a greater desire for control. After all, while some referees are willing to be influenced by others, there are still some anomalies, and their opinions (and yes, the scorecards) are often at odds with what promoters see or want to see on fight night. In the pursuit of control, nothing annoys those in power more than humans, with all their inconvenient flaws and ideas.

“I’m here to bring fairness to the ring,” said boxing’s first artificial intelligence referee. “I analyze every round, every move and every decisive moment in the fight, showing real-time metrics such as aggression, punches, impact and defensive deployment. With this data, I can calculate scores and determine who should Win the game.

This time last year, my last column of 2023 was also an experiment of sorts. In this column, I chose to use ChatGPT to help analyze the year in boxing and found very few errors in its responses to my questions, but this mediocrity should be avoided when writing.

The purpose of this article is not just to mock the limitations of ChatGPT, but to highlight the ease with which future members of the boxing media can populate pages (be they magazines or websites) and satisfy the demands of bosses and promoters alike. Twelve months on, we now have more evidence of this. At that time, we saw news becoming faster and less concerned with quality. We’ve seen all the same mediums producing the same content, whether in the form of videos or articles, and we’ve even seen a mix, with writers having to produce more video content to satisfy the need for simplicity and speed, and YouTubers trying their The writing is just to produce regular “content” on days when no one bothers me.

It’s easy now, you see. With the barrier to entry so low, it doesn’t take much to go from text to tweet to email to article. After all, it’s just words. All you have to do is write one, and then another, and then another, until you’ve finished the word and put a period at the end of the sentence. Then you click “Publish”. This is your content. This is your press pass.

For promoters of the sport, the easier it is, the better. This applies to their own jobs – made easier thanks to Al-Alash and Saudi Arabia – but also to the jobs of those who come to cover their events and tell the world in excited tones what’s going on. It’s the kind of “contact journalism” we see in major events these days, and it requires good relationships and good behavior for this kind of news brand to thrive. Without it, there is no access and therefore no journalism, and the only people who can grant access and support journalism are the initiators and funders of these events. This means that if an event is not reported to the satisfaction of promoters or financiers, the journalists involved, whether writing or filming, may find themselves denied access.

This is the prerogative of organizers, who are free to use this power as they see fit. However, too much flailing and too much resistance to objectivity can turn us into a pretentious persona, giving us the feeling of role-playing a boxing event rather than actually witnessing or participating in it. In fact, there are times when you find yourself watching a broadcast from Riyadh and all you can imagine is how much fun the creators of a show like this have south park It would be nice if boxing was a more popular and serious sport. Right there on the screen, they have all the characters and buzzwords at their disposal, and the rest writes itself naturally.

Then, of course, the fight happens, and we’re immediately reminded of what drew us to boxing in the first place: two fighters, a referee, a ring. Now suddenly there’s nothing pretentious or imitative about it. What we see now is real, meaningful, and authentic. Our eyes and attention now express gratitude. They were right all along: it’s really great.

Usyk and Fury will reunite on Saturday night to give fans the heavyweight fight they want to see. Afterward, they’ll all thank Your Excellency and the Kingdom for making this happen, and we’ll find out what the AI ​​judges think of the battle – because we can. Yes, it will be weird, but as long as it’s beating, we shouldn’t let the artificiality of programming distract from the heart of it all. That still pumps. This remains more important than any other core of sport.

Furthermore, when was the sport of boxing ever so morally ambiguous and difficult to like? Part of its charm is its complexity and always has been. Sometimes we fall head over heels in love with it, and other times we hold our heads in our hands, repulsed by its toxicity, convinced that it has its last chance.

This year, is the year of change that makes us feel like the conflicted wives of millionaire surgeons. Every morning you look in the mirror and tell yourself that your face has never looked better, but you also realize that this is not the face you were born with, and the smile on your face is not genuine; it is not the face you were born with. Innately, this is not the face you were born with, and the smile on your face is not genuine; it is not the face you were born with. Natural. You also accept that once the first incision is made and the first needle or piece of silicon is inserted, there is no turning back; once committed, the work can never be undone.

Then you look around – the beautiful house, the big kitchen, the designer clothes in the closet – and you counteract the decadence with silence, the fact that your husband spends more time away from you than with you, as Habitually cheating is part of the deal. Beyond that, your children have become disenchanted with your inappropriate parenting and are now in therapy, at least you can afford it. Meanwhile, your friends, each of them built the same way, remind you: “It’s always been like this. Stop moaning and embrace it. Otherwise you’ll be worried.”