Speaking of professional sports, it will be necessary to take advantage of AI over the next decade, as the teams that don’t have this advantage, it will be used against them. AI has the ability to find patterns that are usually hidden from the human eye, or, let’s say they don’t make any sense to humans.
This capability is often helpful in identifying problems that are not in focus but related to the subject at hand. AI machines are predictive, and the more data you feed them, the better results they provide, as they are moving towards an intelligence level, which we can call that of a superhuman level.
AI advantage in rugby
Coming back to sports, one does not have to explain the rules of the game to an AI system. These models can learn all the rules by themselves just by watching, and by feeding more game footage spanning over years of matches, they will get an understanding of the sport which will be more than any human.
If rugby game footage is fed to an AI system in a larger quantity, it can find hidden patterns, as mentioned above, which will enable it to identify the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of any player.
If all the matches played by a player in his career are fed to the system, it will learn all the defenses they have made in a match, and how they reacted to tackle any given situation, and the technique they used. As this information will be generated in a short time, and it can be used to take advantage of much better strategies and planning.
It can suggest a better plan to identify the players with the most potential, and it can even come up with a plan to win against any player combination. The possibilities are beyond comprehension. Supposing there is a combination of teams in which one team loses the majority of the matches, AI will come up with a formula to win against the other team and will guide them on how to win.
Assessing the opponents and the next World Cup
While assessing the opponent, if the system is fed with a number of matches of the opposite team, it will point out weak points in their strategy, it will identify their techniques and tactics, and will also predict their next move they could make in their play with extreme accuracy.
On the other side, teams will have to find new strategies often as the tech gets adopted across all the teams, so the job of analysts will become easy, but the coaches who can’t keep up with the evolving trends will get eliminated.
The tech will also help in detecting minute changes in players’ body language and their movements and may suggest if the player is fit or has any problems. With enough data, AI will even be able to predict if any injury is possibly happening to a player.
Very soon, AI will be a necessity for any team, as those who have it will be superior in performance to those who lack it. If a team is able to get hold of it now, they will have better chances of winning the 2027 World Cup, and the tech will be much more utilized by the 2031 World Cup.
AI cannot beat everything and win rugby matches for a team that is disproportionate, for example, in skills, power, conditioning of the players, and their physical attributes. Human decisions and skills will always win matches on the ground, as AI alone cannot win matches. This is the nature of the sport and will remain the same.
The original story can be seen here.
