The AI advantage: How the next two Rugby World Cups will be won
One of the early experiments involving machine learning was done by the Icahn School of Medicine in New York to predict cancer in patients.
Fed with the data of 700,000 patients, the model began spotting new patterns in the data that to the human eye, weren’t visible or didn’t make any sense. The AI model proved to be very good at finding patients with early-stage diseases. As a side, it also figured out warning signs of other disorders like schizophrenia.
The conundrum was researchers running the project had no idea how it was doing it, and still don’t.
As with the case with most AI models, the more data you have to train it, the better the results you get.
They are predictive machines, evolving towards superhuman-level intelligence. The applications are going to have wide use cases but in the realm of professional sport, obtaining the AI advantage is going to be a necessity over the next decade.
You don’t even need to explain the rules of the game. We’ve learnt that the AI models can learn the rules just by watching. Ingest years and years of game footage, it will understand the sport at a level greater than any human could.
You can start to imagine the impact this is going to have. And if you don’t have it, it will be used against you.
An AI model trained on enough games of professional rugby will find every weakness or vulnerability in every single player on the field. Just like the cancer research team found, it will soon find patterns that are unrecognisable to the human eye.
If it watches every game that a professional player has played over their lifetime, it will take into account every single read in defence that they have made, what they do when presented with this picture or that picture, what players they struggle to tackle, what technique they use. Every single decision.
All of that information will be calculated in seconds and result in the AI planning and strategising on how to take advantage.
Armed with that information, it will come up with the perfect play to expose those players. Going further, it will come up with the perfect game plan to win against any combination of 23 players.
If there is a match-up where one team theoretically loses 99 times out of 100, the model will be able to find the formula for the one outcome they can win and show them how to do it.
Upload every game possible from the team of an opposition coach and the AI will figure out every tactic they’ve ever used, every flaw in their plans, and predict what they will do next and the best way to play.
The job of the analyst is going to become rather easy, but the knowledge obtained at such speed will lead to incredible outcomes in game strategy and play.
Teams will have to continually come up with new plans, which will be driven by AI. Coaches who can’t or won’t evolve will get weeded out.
Even in the realm of managing your own team, the technology will be invaluable.
It will be able to detect the slightest changes in a player’s running style, perhaps indicating that player isn’t 100 per cent fit and has a problem.
If the model has all that player’s training data and has been trained on hours and hours of footage of that player’s movement, it will start predicting with scary accuracy whether an injury is likely to occur.
To be clear, the AI is never going to be able to win games of rugby, which are always decided by humans on the actual field. That is sport and won’t change.
The physical attributes still matter greatly, the skill, strength, size, power and the conditioning of the players. No AI can overcome a disproportionate mismatch in this area.
But between two teams that are evenly matched, the one that has superhuman level intelligence feeding them information about the battle at hand is going to improve their chances of victory greatly.
And between the top four nations right now, Ireland, France, South Africa, and New Zealand, where very little separates them, that is going to matter.
Professional sport is always after one per cent improvements, this is going to add far more than one per cent.
Right now it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to build these models. And they lie in the hands of very few, the tech giants who are building major data centres and feeding them as many data points as they can get their hands on.
But once model access is obtainable, professional sports teams will start building their own AI models for competitive use.
If one of the big four rugby nations were able to get a hold of one right now they would increase their chances of winning the 2027 Rugby World Cup greatly. By 2031 you would think this will be widespread.
Quite quickly the AI advantage is going to be a necessity as teams that adopt AI will gain an edge that is far superior to those that don’t.
That is the AI advantage.
Comments on RugbyPass
I am really looking forward to Leigh Halfpenny playing his first Super rugby game for the Crusaders Playing a long side his former Welsh and Scarlets team mate Johnny McNicoll.Johnny has been playing great, back in a Crusaders jersey.The attack has strengthened big time. Also looking forward to David Havili at 10. David is a class act, it also allows Dallas McLeod to remain at 12. A good thing.
1 Go to commentsIf he had stopped insisting on playing in the backrow, instead of wing, where everyone told him he should, he would have been a Bok years ago….
11 Go to comments‘Salads don’t win scrums’ 😂 I love that.
19 Go to commentsCan’t wait for the article that talks about misogyny in Ireland. Somehow.
16 Go to commentsI would like to see a rule change, when the attacking team is held up over the try line, by allowing the defensive team to restart a goal line drop out releases the pressure for the defensive team, but what if the attacking team had to restart a tap 5m out from the defensive team it gives the attacking team to apply more pressure, there are endless options for the attacking side and it will keep the fans in suspence.
2 Go to commentsLess modern South African males predictably triggered.
16 Go to commentsMy heart is with Quins, but the head is convinced Toulouse have too much. Ntamack is back, his timing and wisdom has been missed.
1 Go to commentsWow, what a starting line up for the Sharks) Tasty up front,kremer vs Tshituka or venter …fiery ,,Lavannini ,,will he knobble etzebeth? Biggest game for belleau?
1 Go to commentsIt was rubbish to watch, Blues weren’t even present. Did what they had to do, nothing more. Should be better next week against canes.
1 Go to commentsI’ve just noticed that this match has an all-French refereeing team. Surely a game like this ought to have a neutral ref? Although looking at the BBC preview of the Saints game, Raynal is also down as reffing that - so there may be some confusion about who is reffing what.
1 Go to commentsIf Havili can play anywhere in the back line, why not first 5. #10.
11 Go to commentsThe dressing room had already left for their summer break before they ran out in Dublin that year, and that’s on the coach. Franco Smith has undoubtedly made progress, particularly their maul, developing squad players and increasing squad depth. And against a very tight budget too. That said they were too lightweight last year and got found out against both Toulon and Munster in consecutive games. Better this season so far but they’ve developed something of a slow start habit occasionally, most notably losing at home to Northampton who played them at their own game. Play offs will ultimately show whether there has been tangible progress on last year, or not…!
2 Go to commentsAustralian Rugby has been a disaster, by not incorporating learning from previous successful campaigns. QLD Reds 2011 - Waratahs 2014. Players, coaches and administrators appoint there representatives for scheduled meetings, organisation’s agreement’s assessments and correspondence. This why a unified Rugby Union under one entity works. Every Rugby nation has taken that path. Was most difficult in the Northern hemisphere with over 100 years of club rugby before the game become professional. Took a lot of humility for those unions to eventually work together.
7 Go to commentsThough Wilson’s sacking was pretty brutal, it wasn’t just down to that Leinster game; Glasgow had a lot of 2nd half collapses that season, in the URC and Europe, and only just scraped into the playoffs. Franco Smith has definitely been an improvement, some players are delivering far more than they did under Wilson.
2 Go to commentsjesus - that front 5!
1 Go to commentsShould be an absolute cracker of a game! Will be great to see DuPont & Ntamack in tandem once again🔥
1 Go to commentsBest team ever…. To have played? These guys are still pressure chokers. Came nowhere when it counted. What a joke
84 Go to commentsMusk defends anonymous terrorism, fascism, threats against individuals and children etc etc But a Rugby club account….lock ‘em up!!!
2 Go to commentsActually the era defining moment came a few years earlier. February 2002 to be precise, when Michael D Higgins as finance minister at the time introduced his sports persons tax relief bill to the dial. As the politicians of the day stated “It seems to be another daft K Club frolic born in Kildare amongst the well-paid professional jockeys with whom the Minister plays golf” and that the scheme represented “a savage uncaring vision of Ireland and one that should be condemned”. The irfu and Leinster would be nowhere near the position they are in today without this key component of the finances.
5 Go to commentsIt is crystal clear that people who make such threats on line should be tried and imprisoned. Those with responsibility in social media companies who don’t facilitate this should be convicted. In real life, I have free speech to approach someone like Reinach and verbally threaten him. I am risking a conviction or a slap but I could do it. In the old days, If someone anonymously threatened someone by letter the police would ask and use evidence from the postal system. Unlike the Post, social media companies have complete instant and legal access to the content in social media. They make money from the data, billions. Yet, they turn a blind eye to terrorism, Nazi-ism and industrial levels of threats against individuals including their address and childrens schools being published online all from ananoymous accounts not real people. They claim free speech. Free speech for anonymous trolls/voilent thugs threatening people under false names? The fault is with the perps but also social media companies who think anonymous personas posting death threats constitutes free speech.
2 Go to comments