Slashdot Mirror
Artificial Intelligence to Predict Sports Injuries
nakhla writes "MSNBC.com is running a story on how an Italian soccer team is using artificial intelligence to predict sports injuries. The team is working with Computer Associates to develop neural network technology that can be combined with daily tests of the athletes to determine patterns which occur right before a player gets injured. Of course, one has to assume that it wouldn't be able to predict a player getting kicked in the head in the middle of the game, resulting in a concussion." I was wondering how to tie a World Cup story into Slashdot. Congratulations to Senegal.
Depending on the nature of the neural net, it might be able to predict patterns that let it guess when someone will get kicked in the head.
Do you think that could predict my driving patterns and tell me the next time I will most likely cause an accident? I think the focus should be more on prevention, but what the hell, they're Italian...
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
What if the computer predicted that Michael Jordan would break his leg if he played one more game? It is certainly not 100% correct, so what would happen? Would the coach let him play and take the chance, or would they listen to the computer? What if they didn't heed the computer's warning and MJ broke his leg? Would he have grounds to sue?
:)
Technology is supposed to solve problems, not create them.
qslack.com
Give me their funding and i'll tell you who will for sure get injured... Give me enough $$ and i could tell you who will win the games!
"Make them an offer they can't refuse"
^_^
an Italian soccer team
ah gawd, AC Milan is one of the most famous teams in the world, maybe the name could be included in the article, not just an Italian soccer team.
How much you think that data is worth to bookies?
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-Ok, jim, my computer says you will break your right kneecap on the 35 minute. So, try to be still around then.
-Ok
(at the 35th minute jim stands still, at which point a brick from the fans smashes his head).
The coach returned the brogram cause it was bugged.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I thought artificial intelligence as it relates to sports is either
1. Grade inflation so that the jocks won't miss the big game for the state championships
OR
2. Jocks buying term papers on the internet or beating up the liberal arts students to get them to do it for them so that they don't get considered unable to play by the NCAA and therefore miss the upcoming national championships.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Think of the injuries that could be avoided by just have the AI figure out how the score will turn out. No need to play the game; just sit back and enjoy the simulation.
Isn't the sustaining of injuries one of the cases that player agents make for multi-bizillion dollar salaries?
Heh I wonder if that bird that got hit by a baseball pitch is considered a 'sports injury'.
"Derp de derp."
We need AI that can properly officiate, by golly! AI that can tell when someone is diving to the ice or pretending to be fouled. Once we don't have to worry about humans making bad calls, Shaq won't be able to gripe...the Toronto Maple Leafs won't be able to get boarding calls...Superbowl playoffs that have fumbles will really be called fumbles...
You get the idea...
By the way...Go 'Canes!!
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Of course some injuries are most commonly associated with certain sports (torn ACL == football, broken collar bone == cycling) and you're not going to do much to stop that, aside from some absurd contrivance like the old OSHA Approved Cowboy was wearing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...written all over it.
(as does my forehead)
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I'd watch the World Cup but I don't really care for yahting.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Well, Michael, I can create you a genetic program for this situation. You can tell it "I want /. to feature xxx-flavor-of-the-day", and it will come up with a snappy headline, and a nice semi-controvertial article. So what if the links it makes up are fabricated, I mean no one actually follows them anyway, right?
The best part is, I can build it for you at the rock-bottom price of just $5,000,000!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
One thing that everyone seems to be missing is that being able to predict injuries implies the ability to prevent them. Not through inaction but rather through preventative medicine such as physical therapy to strengthen certain muscles around a particularly dodgy ligament or something.
Such AI would also be useful in correcting improper training--if someone is slowly degrading their ankle/rotator cuff/lower vertebrae/what have you by doing something slightly wrong, such tests and analysis could predict the injury before it happens, allowing the coach/trainer to stop the athlete from doing that bad thing any more.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
"And now, the Gamble-Tron 2000 will tell us the winner, nyahey .... Cincinnati, by 200 points!?!? You stupid piece junk!"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This is about the funniest line I've read today (and today they almost gave the coding staff control of the functional requirements specifications....). Of course the mathematicians think they can get the beast more accurate. Everyone knows
The statisticians believed the odds quoted because they thought them to be grounded in theory established; the physicists believed the odds quoted because they thought them to be grounded in observation.... Only murphy knew the truth.
As someone who has (believe it or not) played sports his whole life (baseball, basketball, football, basically any sport except soccer cause eye foot coordination ain't my bag) I don't think this will work. Sports are just too damned random. Even as the example in the article showed, ole Renando or what ever the hell his name is, blew out his knee on the treadmill. So, what happens when you get 9 fielders and a runner or two on the field and the guy running to first tries to avoid the tag and rolls his ankle severely, or hits a foul ball off his leg, lands on another players foot going for a rebound, gets blind-sided by a 300+lb lineman, etc? This may work in the example listed about treadmills, but will not work in the actual field of play. So, the only real tie-in to sports here is that this soccer (ok, ok, futbol) team has a multi-million dollar investment that was hurt in a mundane activity (treadmill running) and wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. Until it can predict when a player will be hurt before he is in the field of play, come talk to me.
;-) (tongue in cheek, mods, so pull that ruffle back out of your panties :)
Semi-OT now:
What's up with the silly little cards used in soccer? (futbol) It's rather silly. How did it develop? DO people really care? Oh no, I got a piece of plastic pulled out on me, I'm so scared. Yes, I know that it is serious when someone gets red-carded, but the actual act of being penalized is lame as hell. Thoughts? What would be a better system? Everytime a foul is committed the opposing player who was injured gets to power-slam the offender? Sounds good to me. Would make soccer more fun to watch
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I question the wisdom of engaging CA to predict sports injuries when it has a tough time predicting the outcome from doctoring the company books.
Here's a portion of the AI code that was leaked:
it's football dammit, not soccer! Get your own name for a game invented a long time after football.... hummph americans.
0xC3
They don't say exactly what they are measuring with the sensors on the players body, but in addition to those sensors they use "psychological data, as well as information on what each player eats" as input.
I would think they could quantify MRI/CT scans of the relevent areas of the body, and use those as inputs to the NN. Frankly I'm very suprised that it has shown 84% accuracy, but I guess without knowing what the sensors measure it's hard to say.
Computers don't make mistakes. What they do, they do on purpose.
Unlike the World Series, the World Cup actually contains teams from around the world
Right. For example, if they shave their head and paint it like a soccer ball and bury themselves up to the neck in the middle of the field just before practice, yeah, they'll probably get kicked in the head.
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Too bad France didn't have this AI, or they might have held Zidane out of the last match to rest him.
And I say "pppppptttttthhhhpppppt" to France.
The really valuable AI would be to predict player personalities... not only would it have helped the Irish to avoid losing Roy Keane, but it would be invaluable for the 49ers, nearly any NBA team, etc. The stress test case could be to set it to work on Mike Tyson's personality.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
In line four there is = instead of == If the quality of the actual code is like that, I wouldn't bet for the Italian team.
What about Miss Universum?
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
I've noticed that the official site of Fifa 2002 - fifaworldcup.com - runs on Yahoo. Has anyone else experienced a slowdown of the website? Especially in the morning, it gets unusable. Can't they afford more bandwidth?
Don't they have an AI to tell them "We're going to need a bigger boat" ?
technology that can be combined with daily tests of the athletes to determine patterns which occur right before a player gets injured.
Wow, and do you know what the computer is going to say? That people are most likely to get injured when taking RISKS! More risks, more likely injured. Big surpise, next we are going to try and predict who is likely going to get injured in a shootout based on information relaying where the guns are pointed!
-Sean
-Sean
"it's football, not soccer dammnit!"
Soccer is an abbreviated form of "Association Football"
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
The country next door? Wow!
Why do Americans hate soccer so much? I'll admit here in Canada it's not as popular as everywhere else in the world, but most Canadians have a great respect for the game.
In fact, everyone that I know is pumped about the World Cup. We even worked our work project schedule around it, as we realized productivity will be low this month.
Seriously, what is it? Is it not manly enough for you? As if baseball is a real physical sport...
North America's view (excluding Mexico) of soccer really sucks. It's an amazing sport -- funny that the rest of the world seems to think so too.
...to predict fatal accidents on the last turn of the last lap of the last Daytona 500.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
"I was wondering how to tie a World Cup story into Slashdot. Congratulations to Senegal."
Well taco, given how topical a lot of stories are (and don't even get me started on Ask Slashdot), i guess you could just post match scores on the front page.
This is a good place to start a flamewar on slashdot's US-centered-ness, since it looks like the US is one of the few countries where the soccer world cup isn't a completely paralyzing event (what with matches airing at 1 and 3 AM central US time, i bet a lot of sports fans across the continent will show up at work late and half-asleep, if at all, for the next month).
I think I'd rather read an article in which athletes present their predictions on the future of AI.
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
In the case of the victory of Senegal over France, there is no science : French masterplayer Zinedine Zidane got his injury a few days before this match, without obvious reason.
Many people in Senegal, and in Africa more generally, pay sorcerers in order to put a curse on the rival team, and its best players. This article (in french) explains that : all teams that played against Senegal saw their best players injured for their round against Senegal !
So the scientific method to predict injuries must take into account the power of sorcerers ! Can artificial intelligence really know this information ?
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
First im danish, were grouped with both france and senegal. I hate the french team, mostly because a. they are xtremely good, and denmark is grouped with them. B. They allways seem to kick our but when we meet them, only time i can remeber us winning was in Euro 92(but we had a awsome team back then, and we won the entire tournament). And ofcource C. They are french..
BUT, i HATE the fact senegal won. I know everybody loves a underdog win and everything, but jessus! never had i seen such a boring soccer game.They way they won was one of the ugliest things ever seen in football. , they played 4-5-1. But using prettymuch ALL their midfieldser as defenders. So in reality they played something like 8-1-1, which is about as defensive as it gets. The French played all the ball, since only one senegal player seemed to want to leave his own side of the field. But it worked, they won.. But it was one of the most boring VM matches ive ever seen.. The French had possesion (65 france 35 senegal), all they did was running around trying to find a hole in the abnormally big wall of a defence.
In basket terms, if one of the teams desides to not wanna play the game. And everybody just stands under their basket proctecing it, letting only one guy attack once in a while(hoping for a lucky punch).
Teams like this kill soccer...
Version A:
Lets see game played with foot hitting the ball. Oh yeah lets call this football.
Version B:
Man gives odd squished shaped ball to other man via the way of the crotch and then passing said ball by throwing. At that point other man holding ball runs like mad avoiding other running like mad men (always holding ball in hand). Oh yeah lets call this game football.
Hmm, what is more logical Version A or Version B. I think Version A....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I hate it when people stereotype Americans. I'm American, that sure as heck doesn't mean I hate soccer. Now CANADIANS, they are fun to stereotype, just because you really can't. :)
"ah gawd, AC Milan is one of the most famous teams in the world, maybe the name could be included in the article, not just an Italian soccer team."
Yeah, that's not all that's happening in Milan, either
Go Tyler!!!!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I do not think that Americans really think it is sucky. For example take some rugby men in the UK and France and ask them if football is cool. Most likely the answer will be football is for wusses!
The problem with the US (not really a problem) is that the US has way too many sports. Whereas in the rest of the world sports are focused in a few. The rest of the world simply does not get excited about umpteen sports. Hence football simply does not get the frame of mind.
Also realize that Americans do not get as excited and emotional about their sports. Consider the world cup and how France and Italian companies are letting people go home earlier to watch the games. No way that would ever happen in the US or Canada. Could you imagine Jean Chretien getting excited about Team Canada in Ice Hocket? Not really and have not seen it.
When Germany won the World Cup highways in Germany simply shutdown and people got out of their cars to chear for them. It is quite a different intensity. Me at that time I was in Canada and driving through Kitchener Waterloo honking my horn with other Germans.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Most people who play soccer are actually playing football as it is under this name that they play it.
Maybe you find it hard to understand that a sport with this name consists mainly in kicking a ball with your foot, rather than a sport in which you take something called a ball, but that is not even round, and taking it in your hands...
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
we could have prevented seles gettin stabbed ?
nothin can beat human unpredictability
Damn, u simply couldnt be more wrong..
Seriusly, half the players playing football (the entire, oftenly very FAT defensive line springs to mind) could never be even ½ good at soccer. Because its a game not filled with 20something breaks to make room for all the commercials, no you have to actually RUN the entire game, 45*2 minutes. That why u need to be fit, not a fat football paying fuck.. That couldnt catch a retired old lady if she was to steal his crotch strap.
Oh, yeah btw. "football" is ruby for sissies.. did'nt you know?
This is damn funny.
Small logic error, though: Seems reasonable that a player could potentially both be running with scissors and have received the Red Rider BB Gun as a Christmas gift.
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
The Supreme Court overturns today's CIPA ruling, so people can no longer go to the library to see this photo of a young woman, shirtless, on a soccer field. It was deemed pr0nographic by the government censors^H^H^H^H^H^H^H officials.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
if (szPlayer == "Eric Lindros")
{
RaiseInjury("Concussion");
}
crazy dynamite monkey
Unless this some phenomenal new thing, this is the kind of stuff for bookmakers and betters..once it was horses now its jockz...
The baseball "world championship", and it doesn't contain teams from around the world, just the US and Canada. The game is all stats, man, nothing more. Don't let anybody tell you different. It's much more boring to watch than, oh, about anything else on TV. Hell, it's mostly boring when you're there.
Who is the witch doctor that sold the Italians on this idea? Sorry, but sports injuries don't follow a pattern, and neural nets look for patterns. The only pattern it would spot is a guy who gets regularly injured.
Sports injuries happen because of "accidents." Neural nets aren't crystal balls. Hell, the stock market is more predictable than a sports injury, and getting a neural net to predict that is still a rough problem.
So now instead of just employees skiving to watch the footy, we'll have the computers watching the footy as well?
What next, a peripheral to test the various qualities of beer and curry?
Now CANADIANS, they are fun to stereotype, just because you really can't. :)
If you want some good-ole canadian bashing, just watch the South Park movie. "Blame Canada, Blame Canada"
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Why do Americans hate soccer so much?
...
It's an amazing sport -- funny that the rest of the world seems to think so too.
Our sports thoroughly cover the year already, with each sport's season ending nicely as the next begins. Soccer tends to overlap a lot of these, and American teams are for the most part much much less fun to watch than international clubs like AC Milan or Parma or Man U. Without satellite TV most people have a very limited selection of international (read: quality) games to watch, which won't help the popularity grow, which won't help the skills of our teams grow, which won't help the popularity grow. (As much as we like, as Americans, to see ourselves beaten by third world countries.)
Why is it that all these big, strong men need so much padding? And why do they have to keep stopping every three seconds?
When Australian rugby players go to America for "football", they have a great time, and usually win. When the Yanks come over here, they usually take one look at how the game should be played, and say "No way in hell am I going out there without any padding". And then there's the whining about how the game goes on for the entire session, without any breaks. Except for half time.
But even rugby and AFL get called "football", so I suppose that the soccer freaks will still jump on me for that :-)
Personally, I gotta wonder about a group of guys who like to watch another group of guys grapple and feel eachother up, and go on about how fit these athletes are, and have their favourites. And yet they proclaim to be straight? Admit it. If you like watching guys..... :-p
Of all the things you can accomplish by screwing up your face and swearing into a dark room, sleep is not one of them.
Guess you'll just have to root for Detroit then...
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That would be one interesting rule. What counts as a neural network? Most current neural networks are either heavily centralized or mildly useful. I'm sure they would stretch the definition to cover most "computing devices"!
And, how would they know? It's hard enough trying to find out which players use steroids. Are computing devices going to become contraband?
Lastly, what would be the point of the law? Is it to give bad prospects better chances? Is it the first step in outlawing meticulous stat keeping?
Really, I'm not too surprised. Remember, the average poll taker is probably a MSN subscriber.
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First of all, this type of program would help prevent all sports injuries that weren't the result of physical trauma (which may only be 5 or 10%).
I think the biggest thing, though, would be to keep people from keeping bad habits. Mario Lemiuex, for example, was plagued by back problems through the best years of his career. Finally, a few years ago, he went to some specialists who hooked him up to a computer that told him he had bad posture. He fixed his posture, and he's suddenly (miraculously) healthy. Well, except for the hip problems now (heavy sigh of a pens fan).
The problem with these bad habits is that I believe they aggravate the physical trauma. Some bad behaviors could outright lead to a greater chance of an injury, e.g. if you weren't always keeping your head down when making a tackle in american football. And some other bad behaviors (like mario's previously mentioned bad posture) can either transform routine contact into an injury, or aggravate an injury (if the area in question is already messed up from poor form).
I would actually like to see football players wearing little electrode suits, hooked to cameras watching the field, that would send muscle impulses to appropriate players if a potential life-threatened injury was imminent. :)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
If it can predict soccer injuries, I wonder if it can be modded to track stock prices and predict stock prices...
People here appear to be a bit confused between the two. I think what they (CA?) are saying is that they can, with some certainty, predict when a spontaneous injury may occur to an athlete. These "injuries" are not of the get-hit-in-the-head/collide-with-opponent type; of course you can't predict those! But there are some injuries (like a torn ligament or a fracture) that can occur while the player is just playing. These you may be able to predict with some certainty, because the body may have given signals earlier about the existing weakness (maybe some antibodies are created, or some other such tracers can be found). Of course, not having seen what kind of inputs the system uses, it is a tough call to say whether this is real or just witchcraft.