Should AI Work Alongside Human Referees?

[Silverstonez]

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

In my opinion, replacing human referees with artificial intelligence is not a good idea because. Al may make mistakes and lack the human judgment needed to make fair decisions during games. I doubt if artificial intelligence could make sports betting and sports itself fairer as you think. There is no reason to doubt that Al can assist human referees in making more accurate decisions, but replacing human referees completely is a bad idea because fairness in sports doesn’t only requires accuracy, but also human judgement, experience and accountability.

[IjawMan]

As you have already said, AI assistant is already been use to assist the referee in football and in most sport, but replacing humans is what I disagree with because it can be easily gamed or cheated, since such machine is programmed in a certain way.

One thing we humans are very good at is to game any system that is programmed, so it would be a very bad idea to be officiating a game that is an emotional game with something that has no emotions or psychological thinking, the results wouldn't ends well.

What is the essence of the introduction of the Video Assistant Recorder if Ai has to now be used as centre referee in sports matches. I have this conviction that some of the calls by the referees are not actual mistakes but deliberate for unconfirmed purposes.

Only one way possible for us to continue enjoy the sports is not to give Ai a leading role in officiating and deciding the matches. Ai can not feel and thought process emotional feelings with players pressure rises and it burst to a fight in the pitch, how does Ai independently intervene.

It will destroy a lot of things we enjoy about the field, since mistakes are inevitable, the referees only had to do much better to act professionally in their decisions. Ai will only add to newer problems to be tackled again.

[Shinpako09]

In tennis and volleyball lines, that's a different story. AI is more suited for that job because it has higher accuracy.

But for the likes of basketball, I don't think so. Maybe it can reduce missed calls, but it can also make an error where it calls a foul even if it's not. That's not a good idea, especially in crucial moments. Also, I don't think fans would love to see AI making calls sometimes. It's boring, it doesn't have a thrill.

Sometimes missed calls or added calls by human referee add some drama to the game, which makes you feel the game even more. Whether the call is wrong or right, drama is good. That's also a way to get more engagement.

[Felicity_Tide]

~snip

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

Well, technically, that should work things out considering the fact that AI would only draw conclusions based on the available rules. But again, I think it's fine to have a human referee. I just don't like the idea of AI being in complete control of everything. The problem with human referees has always been their inconsistency when it comes to interpreting some footballing rules. I've literally seen countless instances where some referees overlook certain offences, while others don't.

I think improvements can be made if the appropriate refereeing bodies make every single rule governing a particular sport to be very clear. We can't just have Artificial Intelligence controlling everything.

[Crypto_Timothy]

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

I wouldn't say I know exactly the difference between AI in sport and before that was even a thing, I wouldn't say I know the impact level but one thing I know for sure is that since the addition of VAR in football, alot of these offsides and goal clearing conversation for me, they have improved, especially the timing, I think the level to which referees call out are much faster but sometimes I have to ask wouldn't the "human factor" that's is the referee making the decision on his or her own, sometimes I wonder if they had any positive impact in games and if that would be missed especially in football where VAR sometimes literally defines a match

[Powerjumboo]

Yeah, AI can be used or it is already in use, as you said, in different sports. It's already working, and I am willing that it should be introduce into volleyball, it will be so easy. In volleyball, there are always clashes on line touches and net touches. If AI is introduced, then it would be easy for the referee to make a clear decision. However, I don't think that referees can be replaced by AI, as there are still some decisions that only a human referee can make. So, AI can work with human referees, but it can't replace them.

AI can be used to help the referee, because if AI can detect some mistakes on the playing field, it will be very useful for the referee. However, you are absolutely right that this AI can be deployed on the volleyball playing field, because if it is deployed, it can play a good role in catching mistakes like net touch line touch, because sometimes all these reasons create a lot of problems in the game. However, AI cannot be relied upon to replace the entire game, AI can be used as an assistant to the human referee.

[Fiatless]

Nah, people will be removed from the equation completely to remove fears of them being paid off to influence the event. It is literally only a matter of time. I don’t think this is a debatable topic. Sure, it might be 10, 20, or 50 years, but I’m 100% certain it will happen. There is no reason to use humans. They will be worse than SI at literally everything.

Even robots can be manipulated by thier developers. They can be programmed in a way that could favour a team or player. You are correct that technology is fast becoming part of sports games. But I am not visualising a time when humans would be fully replaced by bots. Human interaction is a major part of sports. Players wouldn't want to interact with a referee that is a robot. However, technological tools to make the games error-free would improve. But humans will always be involved.

[Dogedegen]

I've been watching local volleyball and there's a scenario where the a referee made a wrong call. It got me thinking, now that AI is everywhere, is it possible for AI to replace human referees to reduce bias and avoid questionable or wrong calls? For regular fans, it's frustrating to see a questionable calls but for most bettors, one wrong call could mean losing money.

If I am not mistaken, AI are already beting used in some sports such as tennis for line calls and football for offside decisions withe the help of VAR. Right now, I realized that replacing a human referees are not completely possible. Instead, AI could work alongside them. For instance, calling a foul in basketball or other contact sports, giving penalty due to the behaviour of the player, etc. requires human judgement and AI alone won't be able to determine something like that.

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

The main question is why would you leave human referees? It seems that many humans are unable to let things go and change for the better. If an AI referee is developed that is substantially better than the best human referee, then there is no place to leave them in the game. It is like if you insisted to use also horses for going into the city after we all have cars, because why not have horses transport people alongside cars?   I don't think we are there yet, but it would be best to see this outcome in the future. I expect that we need 5 to 10 years at most, but if we will see the change happen will depend on if they can make the audience accept that the human referees will be a thing of the past.

But for the likes of basketball, I don't think so. Maybe it can reduce missed calls, but it can also make an error where it calls a foul even if it's not. That's not a good idea, especially in crucial moments. Also, I don't think fans would love to see AI making calls sometimes. It's boring, it doesn't have a thrill.

That is the same error that humans make, so that is not really an argument for this kind of thing. AI does not need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than humans and that is not hard to achieve. There is a big difference between the best referees and the average referee.  

[Texac]

I don’t think this will ever happen. And it shouldn't be like this.
You are right that AI is still not quite up to mark when it comes to understanding intent and behavior of player in contact sport. For instance, in basketball determining whether any foul is charging or blocking foul isn't just matter of following the rulebook, it also require situational judgment. Similarly in football, any impartial referee is essential to distinguish between natural handball and intentional one.

I also think it's unlikely that AI will completely replace human referee anytime soon. And I don't really see any need for that either.  But technology is developing pretty fast and thing that require human judgment today could easily be handled by algorithms with high level of accuracy in just few year.
After all, it's often subjective judgment, emotion, pressure from crowd and even reputation of certain player(like messi) that lead to wrong or biased decision. I think in this case, main goal here isn't even to completely eliminate human factor but to make refereeing as consistent and transparent as possible.

[Hispo]

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

In my opinion, replacing human referees with artificial intelligence is not a good idea because. Al may make mistakes and lack the human judgment needed to make fair decisions during games. I doubt if artificial intelligence could make sports betting and sports itself fairer as you think. There is no reason to doubt that Al can assist human referees in making more accurate decisions, but replacing human referees completely is a bad idea because fairness in sports doesn’t only requires accuracy, but also human judgement, experience and accountability.

If it depended on me, I would not even think of replacing human referees with machines, to be honest. It does not make much sense to replace a single person who is allegedly already doing their job in good faith and also following the rules of football.

Some people may think using AI or thinking machines as referees could help con combat corruption or avoid dealing with bribed referees, but that is now a problem if accountability is present and proper investigations are done when something fishy takes place during a match.
AI does not need to take jobs which are already being done properly, and there are a lot of honest and efficient referees in FIFA and other associations worldwide who do not deserve to be replaced just because of some isolated cases.

[freedomgo]

Some people may think using AI or thinking machines as referees could help con combat corruption or avoid dealing with bribed referees, but that is now a problem if accountability is present and proper investigations are done when something fishy takes place during a match.

Don't think about that, yes there's an investigation, but how long would it take?

What this system would achieve is to prevent it from happening, most of the time and it can also be used for investigations as long as everything is recorded, it would be easy to review, with AI, it could detect body movements, anything that seems like something wrong is happening and that possible game fixing is taking place.. there are patterns that you can feed into AI for it to check. So welcome the development of AI, it's there to help preserve the integrity of the game not to replace humans.

[Royal Cap]

Don't think about that, yes there's an investigation, but how long would it take?

What this system would achieve is to prevent it from happening, most of the time and it can also be used for investigations as long as everything is recorded, it would be easy to review, with AI, it could detect body movements, anything that seems like something wrong is happening and that possible game fixing is taking place.. there are patterns that you can feed into AI for it to check. So welcome the development of AI, it's there to help preserve the integrity of the game not to replace humans.

No matter how intelligent AI is, at the end of the day it is a software or program created by humans. When those who commit corruption or manipulate the main system or subtle changes the algorithm, then the corruption is not only silent it will be even more difficult to spot with a human eye.  And the real beauty of sports is human emotions and the unpredictable situation on the field. When everything is evaluated correctly by a machine, a lot of the excitement or excitement of the game might be eliminated. So for the main referee, it makes sense to me to have AI as an assistant or assistant to humans for decision making.

[Tongley]

It would be best to use AI as an assistant, when AI takes charge of the referee, many types of problems may arise. For example, many times a decision has to be made after considering many types of judgments, then AI may not be able to do anything. Because AI does not have the power to make any kind of decision by using intelligence. Many times it is seen that many types of tension are created in the field and many times situations like fighting are created, at this moment, AI can give red cards to many players, but if a person is in charge of the referee, he will probably give red cards to the person who is the indicator for creating this situation. So even though AI is used everywhere, using AI in some places is very risky.

[iBaba]

I've been watching local volleyball and there's a scenario where the a referee made a wrong call. It got me thinking, now that AI is everywhere, is it possible for AI to replace human referees to reduce bias and avoid questionable or wrong calls? For regular fans, it's frustrating to see a questionable calls but for most bettors, one wrong call could mean losing money.

If I am not mistaken, AI are already beting used in some sports such as tennis for line calls and football for offside decisions withe the help of VAR. Right now, I realized that replacing a human referees are not completely possible. Instead, AI could work alongside them. For instance, calling a foul in basketball or other contact sports, giving penalty due to the behaviour of the player, etc. requires human judgement and AI alone won't be able to determine something like that.

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

Ai can really make sports fairer but I would not want it to replace human referees completely, because in sports like volleyball, tennis and football, technology can help identify mistakes that are difficult to be seen by the human eye. Though some decisions still depend on how the referee interprets the situation.

Personally the best thing is to let Ai assist referees and give them another option or way to check questionable decisions which I think some are already existing. Even a small mistake can change the result of a match and for bettors it can mean losing money on the bet they have confidence in or thought was safe. But it would be very interesting if some innovation are put in place to see how accurate Ai can be. So if there is any mistake from the Ai they should still a way they can review it decisions.

[eisen33]

I've been watching local volleyball and there's a scenario where the a referee made a wrong call. It got me thinking, now that AI is everywhere, is it possible for AI to replace human referees to reduce bias and avoid questionable or wrong calls? For regular fans, it's frustrating to see a questionable calls but for most bettors, one wrong call could mean losing money.

If I am not mistaken, AI are already beting used in some sports such as tennis for line calls and football for offside decisions withe the help of VAR. Right now, I realized that replacing a human referees are not completely possible. Instead, AI could work alongside them. For instance, calling a foul in basketball or other contact sports, giving penalty due to the behaviour of the player, etc. requires human judgement and AI alone won't be able to determine something like that.

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

I don’t think AI will be able to fully replace referees, because referees are right there on the pitch with the players, and it’s impossible to get a better view of every incident. And there are plenty of situations where players dive, and I think those will be particularly difficult for AI to distinguish from genuine fouls. Honestly I’d prefer AI to have as little involvement as possible in officiating sports.

[Finebone]

Many times it is seen that many types of tension are created in the field and many times situations like fighting are created, at this moment, AI can give red cards to many players, but if a person is in charge of the referee, he will probably give red cards to the person who is the indicator for creating this situation. So even though AI is used everywhere, using AI in some places is very risky.

It would be wrong to put only AI in charge of a game without no human assistance because their will be so many errors.

Naturally humans should be the ones in charge of the game and AI Should be used as a tool to assist the referee if their is any form of controversy, because in a situation like altercation between players that you spoke of, the referee can easily verify with the use of AI assistant to punish any offender, but if their is any violent conduct, the players will be punished according to the rules of the game, but if a situation like that happens when only AI is in charge, it would be difficult for AI to calm the situation down and pass a proper judgement because it is a machine that does not have emotions and it is programmed in a certain way, not as logical or emotional thinking like a human being.

[abaeze]

I thought about it a little, there was a time when referees only used to make decisions based on what they could see in front of their eyes, i.e. fouls, handballs, off-sites or other rules of the game, and as a result, many wrong decisions affected the outcome of the game. In some cases, there are records of players deliberately committing fouls or scoring goals with their hands behind the referee's back. Not only that, in some cases, due to wrong decisions, someone would lose a drawn match and someone would win, and there would be arguments about the outcome of the game, leading to fights or clashes between the two sides or between the two team's players.

However, now due to technology and AI referees have increased their accuracy in making the right decisions and the referee can't act in a biased manner if he wants. However, there are some controversial issues that AI can't directly solve. Therefore, AI has given us extensive support and will continue to give us in the future to manage the game in a beautiful and disciplined manner and to avoid right decisions and controversial decisions, but one complements the other, not to the exclusion of the human.

[TheUltraElite]

Reducing the number of erroneous decisions with the help of AI will make sports betting more successful, as it seems, but also the fairness in sports will have to depend on how the conditions and availability of these technologies will be regulated and how competition rules will be recommended. Without proper regulation and ensuring equal access to AI tools, all these "tech solutions" can lead to new forms of inequality rather than genuine justice.

I do feel the regulation of AI and its gradual improvement is making conclusions will happen but that does not mean that a human referee should be replaced. If they do, I am not longer watching that game, its better to just let robots play that game and let them decide what happens on their own.

Currently they are taking help of algorithms which are giving a possible solution and with that in mind they make the final call.

But the fact that the referee or the umpire in cricket has so much power is something that should not be taken away.

[OsaiEmma]

I've been watching local volleyball and there's a scenario where the a referee made a wrong call. It got me thinking, now that AI is everywhere, is it possible for AI to replace human referees to reduce bias and avoid questionable or wrong calls? For regular fans, it's frustrating to see a questionable calls but for most bettors, one wrong call could mean losing money.

If I am not mistaken, AI are already beting used in some sports such as tennis for line calls and football for offside decisions withe the help of VAR. Right now, I realized that replacing a human referees are not completely possible. Instead, AI could work alongside them. For instance, calling a foul in basketball or other contact sports, giving penalty due to the behaviour of the player, etc. requires human judgement and AI alone won't be able to determine something like that.

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

Actually, it's very much possible to completely replace officials. Combining computer vision, a well trained AI, and multiple angled cameras will create a full on AI referee. But, I don't think it will be as fun as having a human referee. It doesn't even need to be a robot, you can just place cameras everywhere and you'll have a more precise officiating; but I'll still prefer a human referee over an AI—this is just my personal preference—but logically, an AI referee might probably have more accuracy which we all want, right?

Secondly, new scenarios do occur in the field, and an AI might get confused in this situation. So at the end of the day, we will still need a human intervention. So, I agree with most of us that said human and AI combo is the best way forward.

[ruykeri]

So my questions is, if AI could reduce incorrect calls and make decision more consistent, wouldn't that make sports betting and the sports itself fairer? What you guys think?

In my opinion, replacing human referees with artificial intelligence is not a good idea because. Al may make mistakes and lack the human judgment needed to make fair decisions during games. I doubt if artificial intelligence could make sports betting and sports itself fairer as you think. There is no reason to doubt that Al can assist human referees in making more accurate decisions, but replacing human referees completely is a bad idea because fairness in sports doesn’t only requires accuracy, but also human judgement, experience and accountability.

you are right. AI can never completely replace the referee. OP originally wanted to know whether AI can help the referee make more accurate decisions. In sports, the main decision has to be made by the human referee. The referee may not notice something, but it may be possible to identify it through AI. In such a situation, AI will only work as an assistant. If an aggressive tackle is seen between two players in the box in a match, but if the referee cannot see it properly, then he will not be able to understand the whole incident clearly. This is exactly why if there is an opportunity to reconsider the incident in any other way, then the referee will definitely take that opportunity. And this is why VAR technology has been introduced. So AI may be important for accuracy, but the experience of the human referee is the main thing. It will never be possible to manage any sports with the capabilities of AI alone.