OT: AI has advanced to the point of overtaking sports journalism

[Harry Garris]

It can write a readable article but not one that’s particularly entertaining for the reader.

I don’t read sports articles to have stats or season results aggregated or contextualized for me, which is about all an AI is capable of. I want to see fun anecdotes and observations and opinions of sports writers that I’ve built a kind of bond with by reading their stuff and getting to know them over the years.

[Fencer reregistered]

I suspect this of all being a bit circular, in that it couldn't do this unless it had articles written by live people to imitate.

I'm a bit embarrassed that I don't know for sure.

[Warriors Analyst]

AI might become useful for sites trying to cheap out and pump out aggregated content. But the AI is a ways away from being able to provide the true value that NBA journalists have -- connections to agents, players, and front office people and (hopefully), thoughtful questions asked during podium press conferences and scrums.

Take Shams, for example. He's not much of a writer. But he's well-connected and he scoops well. An AI won't be able to do that job, even though I don't think all that highly of Shams as a writer.

But on the flip side, The Athletic also employs some of the best story-tellers in the NBA writing world. Jon Krawczynski for the Timberwolves, Anthony Slater and Marcus Thompson II for the Warriors, Jason Quick for the Trail Blazers, and Jared Weiss for the Celtics stand out as some of the best writers working right now in the NBA because they have access and because they do a good job of watching games and turning those moments into something with deeper meaning and putting one or two plays in context for a player's season-long development.

AI won't be doing that anytime soon.

[biebstothelotto]

AI already took over the NBA too



The future is AI journalists reporting on robots playing basketball.

[ItsDanger]

This is already deployed in many areas, useful for low level basic info especially. Soon, you'll see AI posters debating Lebron vs MJ.

[amcoolio]

AI might become useful for sites trying to cheap out and pump out aggregated content. But the AI is a ways away from being able to provide the true value that NBA journalists have -- connections to agents, players, and front office people and (hopefully), thoughtful questions asked during podium press conferences and scrums.

Take Shams, for example. He's not much of a writer. But he's well-connected and he scoops well. An AI won't be able to do that job, even though I don't think all that highly of Shams as a writer.

But on the flip side, The Athletic also employs some of the best story-tellers in the NBA writing world. Jon Krawczynski for the Timberwolves, Anthony Slater and Marcus Thompson II for the Warriors, Jason Quick for the Trail Blazers, and Jared Weiss for the Celtics stand out as some of the best writers working right now in the NBA because they have access and because they do a good job of watching games and turning those moments into something with deeper meaning and putting one or two plays in context for a player's season-long development.

AI won't be doing that anytime soon.

I mean this has been out less than two weeks. Look at how far AI art has come in the last 6 months.

I think discrediting what AI is doing right now is like saying the internet is nothing more than a hobby in 1993. I have no doubt that AI like this will be able to add hot takes and stories in the near future.

[G35]

I don't know if any of you are following the recent few days of Chat GPT, but it is now almost accurate enough to completely replace a sports writer's job. A lot of journalists are freaking out about this. Sure, its still a bit robotic, but with a few more months of training, I can see the Associated Press just using AI to write nearly every article.

I just asked the AI to write for me a post about why the Hornets should tank this season, and it spit out this in less than a minute:

The Charlotte Hornets have struggled in recent years, failing to make the playoffs since the 2016-2017 season. In order to rebuild their team and become contenders again, they should consider tanking for the highly-touted prospect, Victor Wembanyama.

Wembanyama is a 7-foot-3-inch center from France who has been dominating the junior ranks in Europe. He has exceptional size and length, as well as a versatile skill set that allows him to score in a variety of ways. He is an excellent rim protector and has shown the ability to hit outside shots, making him a potential matchup nightmare for opposing teams.

Tanking for Wembanyama would involve the Hornets intentionally losing games in order to improve their chances of getting a high draft pick. This strategy has been used by several teams in the past, and while it may not be popular with fans, it can be an effective way to rebuild a struggling franchise.

In the short term, tanking would likely result in the Hornets being one of the worst teams in the league. However, in the long term, it could pay off by giving them a chance to draft a player like Wembanyama who could become the cornerstone of their franchise.

If the Hornets are able to land Wembanyama, they would have a talented young center to build around. He would join a young core that already includes players like Devonte' Graham and Miles Bridges, giving the team a strong foundation for the future.

In conclusion, tanking for Victor Wembanyama may not be the most popular decision, but it could be the best decision for the long-term success of the Charlotte Hornets. By intentionally losing games, they could improve their chances of drafting a player who has the potential to become a star and help the team return to contention.

Notice it said Devonte Graham, this is because as of right now the AI I used is only accurate to the world as of Jan 2021, but they are working on that.

Similar to AI art which is trending in recent weeks, it will be almost impossible for teachers to differentiate between written essays and AI generated essays.

I predict that within one year, AI will be strong enough that that automatically have detailed conversations with posters here on RealGM. They will be among us...

Definitely, this has been going on for a while. I play fantasy football on Yahoo, and after every game now they give a game recap and it pretty says the same thing as that article. Yeah, its not very useful or enlightening but it gives you the basic gist of what happened.

Its the same type of AI that is doing word prediction when you are texting, and your phone starts to recognize your speech/texting patterns....

[Hangtime84]

I been waiting on access to ChatGpt but was late to the party.

It will be helpful for historical takes.

The information in the algorithm isn’t real time accuracy as sports journalism is usually based on (unless it’s the off season).

I like the low code aspect of it. And small email follow ups or headline features.

[picc]

If sports journalists and analysts weren't so robotic, they wouldn't be able to be replaced by robots. Listening to pre-game shows/sports media/reading sports articles is painful and 98% useless.

They should do the same with news anchors, who i'm not sure are human anyway. Nobody will know the difference.

[Warriors Analyst]

AI might become useful for sites trying to cheap out and pump out aggregated content. But the AI is a ways away from being able to provide the true value that NBA journalists have -- connections to agents, players, and front office people and (hopefully), thoughtful questions asked during podium press conferences and scrums.

Take Shams, for example. He's not much of a writer. But he's well-connected and he scoops well. An AI won't be able to do that job, even though I don't think all that highly of Shams as a writer.

But on the flip side, The Athletic also employs some of the best story-tellers in the NBA writing world. Jon Krawczynski for the Timberwolves, Anthony Slater and Marcus Thompson II for the Warriors, Jason Quick for the Trail Blazers, and Jared Weiss for the Celtics stand out as some of the best writers working right now in the NBA because they have access and because they do a good job of watching games and turning those moments into something with deeper meaning and putting one or two plays in context for a player's season-long development.

AI won't be doing that anytime soon.

I mean this has been out less than two weeks. Look at how far AI art has come in the last 6 months.

I think discrediting what AI is doing right now is like saying the internet is nothing more than a hobby in 1993. I have no doubt that AI like this will be able to add hot takes and stories in the near future.

Yeah, I've seen the AI growth as well. But I still think there's, for lack of a better word, a human element that they'll struggle to convey in writing. Will the AI ask questions to Steve Kerr and contextualize those answers against the last two years of Warriors' basketball? Will an AI know that Caris LaVert coached Josh Giddey at a Basketball Without Borders camp and ask a question about that in a press conference post-game? Will the AI watch game film and make a write-u; that shows how a team like the Milwaukee Bucks have changed their defensive scheme this season after spending most of the Budenholzer-era protecting the paint and letting teams bomb threes above the break?

[arh1109]

It isn't written great but could pass as an 6th grader who knows little about basketball or sports writing. There is not much detail in the article and multiple redundant paragraphs defining the strategy of tanking.

[amcoolio]

Oh my GOD

"write a sonnet about how bad the Charlotte Hornets have been over the last 5 years"

In Charlotte, Hornets once flew with pride,
A team with strength and skill, feared far and wide.
But now, alas, their wings have been clipped,
A five year slump has left them dipsomaniac.

Their record poor, their play a sad, sad sight,
No hope for playoffs, just a lackluster fight.
Gone are the days of Kemba and Big Al,
Now just a shell of their former glory, they fall.

Fans once filled the stands with passion and cheer,
Now they sit in silence, a sea of fear.
Ownership uncertain, future unclear,
The Hornets' downfall, a tragedy to hear.

But hope remains, a glimmer in the dark,
With hard work and determination, they'll make their mark.

[AbeVigodaLive]

The Associated Press has been using AI for game previews and recaps for several years now.

[DCasey91]

AL >>> AI. Today you can make a learning program with that will clock the NBA because after all it’s a game.

Neural network learning is very dangerous but incredible at the same time. It’s solved numerous games such as Connect 4, DOTA, Chess, GO, Monopoly even winning awards in science on protein development within a couple of hours. Basically any game a neural program will easily beat in a very short time frame.

Couple of hours to them is the equivalent to a million plus years of human thinking.

It’s actually frightening when you think about what they haven’t publicly shown.

Good guess the AL will just say form a mighty duck Flying V formation protect Curry at all costs and make him shoot 30 3’s game. It’s ridiculous but they don’t think like we do.

[SalmonsSuperfan]

It can write a readable article but not one that’s particularly entertaining for the reader.

I don’t read sports articles to have stats or season results aggregated or contextualized for me, which is about all an AI is capable of. I want to see fun anecdotes and observations and opinions of sports writers that I’ve built a kind of bond with by reading their stuff and getting to know them over the years.

Right, this is something that will (I hope) only be automated for marketing BS. a robot can’t think critically or have emotions which is, I would think, the point of reading something somebody else wrote.

[DCasey91]

AI might become useful for sites trying to cheap out and pump out aggregated content. But the AI is a ways away from being able to provide the true value that NBA journalists have -- connections to agents, players, and front office people and (hopefully), thoughtful questions asked during podium press conferences and scrums.

Take Shams, for example. He's not much of a writer. But he's well-connected and he scoops well. An AI won't be able to do that job, even though I don't think all that highly of Shams as a writer.

But on the flip side, The Athletic also employs some of the best story-tellers in the NBA writing world. Jon Krawczynski for the Timberwolves, Anthony Slater and Marcus Thompson II for the Warriors, Jason Quick for the Trail Blazers, and Jared Weiss for the Celtics stand out as some of the best writers working right now in the NBA because they have access and because they do a good job of watching games and turning those moments into something with deeper meaning and putting one or two plays in context for a player's season-long development.

AI won't be doing that anytime soon.

Famous last words. AL in particular can do pretty much anything if you give it enough time and development. Time as in a matter of hours, weeks or a month of learning.

Neural learning can easily clock any human game.

The stuff they would spew out would be so out of the box

[dirkdiggler4177]

AI will help journalists write stories that the journalists know. For example, a journalist can interview a person and then tell the AI what the interview object told him. The AI will write it and the journalist can edit it.
The same for customer service. I do the same when programming. The other day chat gpt wrote ML learning code for me. Lets go!

[Chuck Everett]

In an era of TLDR, who gives a ****? So many people are proud to admit they never read. You think they are going to be reading AI-created articles? All this is going to mean is more people out of work.

[JonFromVA]

We're only going to get more journalists stealing more ideas from here as they begin to realise that their advantage against ChatGPT is creativity and new ideas.

I wonder if ChatGPT could be fed writing from realGM?

Presumably ChatGPT is using a web crawler that's gathering all sorts of articles to feed it's model, perhaps even from RealGM, Reddit and the like unless it was determined the input was garbage.

But at some point, AI will have to go beyond learning from what others have done or it will eventually run out of original content to feed on and starve.

[sikma42]

Honestly that sounds like an 8th grade paper which means half of ESPN's on air talent couldn't do it better.

Coming from an attorney, that’s B level undergrad writing.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app