Slashdot Mirror
Sports Highlights via AI
nazarijo writes "Found via Brian Chin's Weblog, it looks like scientists and researchers at Microsoft are working on ways to automatically discover game highlights. This article in the New Scientist discusses several research groups, some in Europe, working to make these ideas a reality. Microsoft research is doing this, too, with highlights from the Mariner's shown as examples. A choice quote from the end of the MSR piece: 'By hitting the highlights of baseball games, we get to view only the best parts of multimedia life. And who knows what's next? Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.'"
Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.'
They have this now. It's called the internet. news.google.com is a great example. Pick the news that you want it, when you want it - without the witty banter!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Apple had this "summarize" feature that was going to be incorporated into Sherlock that could take a document and "summarize" it in a few paragraphs. I remember it being uncannily good at picking out what the most important sentences from a document were. Like I remember in one demo they fed it the text of "hamlet" and it spit out about four lines of dialogue from various points in the play that actually did a pretty good job of highlighting what happens over the course of the play...
Unfortunately this feature was never given a proper interface and eventually kind of disappeared into the midst of time. What happened there?
AI? Just look for volume spikes in crowd noise...
Between George W. Bush and John Kerry, it's getting to the point where no political candidate ever says anything longer than a couple-sentence soundbite anyway. Why bother writing a program to summarize speeches if all the speeches these days are summary-length to begin with?
dont mean to sound paranoid, but couldnt people controlling these systems control the media? people that could censor shit even more than it is today?
Investing forum
You could probably pick out the highlights JUST from gauging crowd reaction, without once looking at what's happening on the field...
yay. >:-|
Now the rest of the world can sound-byte themselves.
WhoooHooo.
Why don't they do something actually useful like work on P-NP problems?
(yes that IS useful and cool)
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
Usually during big plays and events worthy of next morning's [espn] sportscenter; the crowd usually gets extremely loud, in a short burst of time. They [software makers] could use this to their advantage, and record footage when the db level is above a certain amount, say 100 [give or take 15 secs.
John Jackson: "It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: I'm against those things that everybody hates."
Jack Johnson: "Now, I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man. But quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said."
John Jackson: "I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far."
Jack Johnson: "And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough."
The owls are not what they seem
Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.
I don't know about everyone else, but I only watch the news on television because of the hot anchor eye candy. Take that away and TV news has no advantage over reading news on the web at all.
Yes, I do have a thing for asian chicks.
the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.
oh oh, this technology could wipe out the slashdot comments section entirely!
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
I remember playing BattleTech a number of years ago before WotC made its huge decline. After the game it would print out a summary of how you did in the game on a piece of paper and a number of TVs would replay the game, selecting the most interesting action at the time to be shown.
I imagine it was a lot easier to do with BattleTech because all the variables are already in the computer and it knows exactly what happened. It must be harder to do with video or whatever (sorry, I didn't RTFA) because the computer has to figure out what happened, but I'm just trying to say that automated game highlights like this aren't completely new.
Andrew
Ok, doesnt really make sense, but consider this. How many people want software deciding what is important to see and what is not? During WWII, if the ENIAC decided whether I was to recieve medical treatment on the battlefield over some other person, I would be quite pissed...even if I was chosen to recieve treatment.
Basically, I view this as another method of limiting something we are already freely available to do, based on our own will. Even if it is an opt-in thing, people will opt-in...and before you know it we will be a few drones watching only what companies want us to. Sound like Harrison Bergeron to me.
Dont get me wrong, this is a very cool technology, and I completely support the development of it. I just dont like the niche it is meant to fill. AKA, Media censoring.
Wait a second...did they say less political speech times? Holy crap! Less Bush! Where do I sign up!?!..........See my point?
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
"the witty banter between news anchors edited out." This could be the best thing for PRON since the internet! Who wants to see the bad acting anyways. Just get strait to the good stuff.
"Yer out! Home run! Home run! Yer out! Yer out! Home run! Thank you, and goodnight!"
You must think in Russian.
There's already only 5 minutes of news happening per day, if that. That's why 24 hour news networks really scare me.
I can totally see this helping with the never-stopping shrinking of attention span.
[This comment kept short so it can be read in less than 8 seconds]
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I could definately do without the witty banter on the news (yet another reason to get your news online from Google, the NY Times, the BBC, whomever), but I am greatly troubled by the idea that political speeches could get even shorter. Short political speeces are the worst aspect of politics in my opinion. Why deliver a twenty minute oratory that fully explores and explains your views on an issue, when you can just repeat some trite soundbyte that will fit into the alloted 20 seconds on the news? Seriously, have you ever listened to an entire political speech? I would say that fewer than 10% of people ever have. Those who have would tell you that most speeches are just jam-packed with soundbytes (they hate our freedom, etc.) rather than actual 'content.' It's because of the way we like to have information condensed and pre-chewed for us. Of course, if you're interested in something, you can always do the extra research to find out more about it, but who has the time?
I think that the politics problem extends, to a point, to sports as well. For example, I find watching baseball mercilessly boring, but I enjoy watching the highlights. But do I get all the nuances of the game or really learn anything about the players? No. I'm guessing that for most people this isn't a problem and that's why we're headed to the scenario outlined in the article. I just think it's too bad.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
Too bad all the Mariners highlights this year will probably be of the opposing team :/
A 3 day test match in 30 minutes!
Semper ubi sub ubi
This is easy, simply track what segments of the game everyone rewinds in Tivo. We know they can already do this! They anounce how many times Janets Breast was reviewed!
Microsoft and sports on Slashdot.. isn't that like an African american at a KKK meeting?
I like muppets.
In a previous post, I mentioned how I thought it was a bad idea for most content to be further compressed, especially politics. I wonder what this trend does to the field of journalism? More and more it seems that the job of a news person is to play back a choice clip of some event rather than to analyze it and provide context.
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
I saw this in Front Page Sports Football '95. The game would pick out 5 plays from each game and save them as highlights. This even worked for the games you simulated between computer-controlled teams. It was pretty predictable stuff, long passes and 1-yard runs for TDs. The computer had a real predilection for fumbles, though, which irked me. Once in a while you'd get an actual interesting one, like a trick play that worked, or career-ending injury. Heh. Career-ending injuries. Too bad that franchise went downhill fast after '95...a few years later they were refunding people's money because the company publically admitted they'd shipped a crappy product.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
cliff notes for real life:
Coming soon: "The 50 Minute Friendship" (highlights only) and "Best of Marriage" for the professional on the go (includes 40 hours of heart to hearts, 60 hours of distilled personal growth, and 260 minutes of orgasms)
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Isn't this a job much better accomplished by a person? A well trained person at that.
For example, on DirecTV, the NFL Sunday Ticket package delivered 3-5 minute highlights for every game. However, the highlights on NFL primetime (also about 3-5 minutes per game) were edited with so much more flare, personality, and smart analysis that there was no comparison. Same game, often the same shots, but the human factors made all the difference.
For events broadcast to wide audiences, why would you not want a talented editor to cut the footage? Is the technology going to be cheaper than a good editor? I doubt it.
I never noticed that was there.
Services are such a great feature. I don't understand why they're so underused.
when the sound of the crowd peaks rewind 15 seconds and there you go. i can't think of many other ways of doing this and there can't be much fault behind this way.
These dudes are using AI to capture a hockey game and record the highlights. The game can then be made into icons and replayed on your mobile phone. The print artcile was better because they showed some screenshots.
m l?articleId=21401293&kc=6265
http://www.eetimes.com/issue/tech/showArticle.jht
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Sorry, but using the Mariners as a test bed this season may lead to a faulty program. Finding highlights from those guys would be a stretch, to say the least.
...changes things over time....
So the real question is: how often will you need an upgrade to get the highlights..... or..... how long untill everything is written to trigger off the highlight function?
The way to make something not real is to let everyone in on it..... like countering the damage of the Black-Scholes Formula and the trillion dollar bet loss...
how about measure the volume of the crowd and the 'tone' for cheering or booing, add 5 seconds before the cheering or booing, and thats your highlight.
the crowd get excited so it must be good, if the crowd is bored then i'll be bored.
works for sports, but not the news.
I, for one, will be interested to see if MS Research at long last comes up with something interesting. It is strange that, with all the money and talent they have, so that the have come up with nothing worth comparing against the stuff that the likes of IBM, HP and (to a lesser extent) Sun Microsystems have been churning out for years.
CNN Headline News, and the various local or regional cable news channels (Northwest Cable News, ChicagoLand TV, et al).
Not that it will change what they produce, but will change HOW they do it.
I wonder what will happen when it's built-in to TIVO boxes, though.
Slashdot tried this. It did not work.
Witness the many AC posts with interesting ideas (of course, among the idiotic trolls) and the even more numerous +2 posts which are totally uninteresting (to be euphemic).
The net result is creating a second class citizen, which simply doesn't get heard.
It's interesting the way Slash limits output so that AC posts are really, really hard to locate. We need another Alterslash, but on which only 0-grade posts show.
From Simpsons 1F15:
At the KBBL studios, Bill and Marty's boss gives them a dressing-down.
Boss: Look, our ratings are down, and the station is being swamped
with angry calls and letter-bombs.
[A few letter-bombs explode in a pile]
And it's all your fault!
Bill: Yes it is, ma'am.
Boss: This is the DJ 3000. It plays CDs automatically, and it has
three distinct varieties of inane chatter.
[presses a button]
DJ 3000: [stilted] Hey, hey. How about that weather out there?
Woah! _That_ was the caller from hell.
Well, hot dog! We have a weiner.
Bill: Man, that thing's great!
Marty: _Don't_ praise the machine!
Boss: If you don't get that kid an elephant by tomorrow, the DJ 3000
gets your job.
[Marty punches it]
DJ 3000: Those clowns in congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns.
Bill: [laughs] How does it keep up with the news like that?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
But the witty banter is what makes watching news fun! Edit out commercials and worthless news-that's how it should work.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
I could do with a similar interface for conversing in general......like a stimulus to inform me when i'm actually supposed to be kicking my brain into gear.
Slashdot News Before Filter:
nazarijo writes "Found via Brian Chin's Weblog, it looks like scientists and researchers at Microsoft are working on ways to automatically discover game highlights. This article in the New Scientist discusses several research groups, some in Europe, working to make these ideas a reality. Microsoft research is doing this, too, with highlights from the Mariner's shown as examples. A choice quote from the end of the MSR piece: 'By hitting the highlights of baseball games, we get to view only the best parts of multimedia life. And who knows what's next? Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.'"
After Witty Comments Removing Filter:
nazarijo writes "Found via Brian Chin's Weblog, it looks like scientists and researchers and researchers at Microsoft are working on ways to automatically discover game highlights. This article in the New Scientist discusses several research groups, some in Europe, working to make these ideas a reality. Microsoft research is doing this, too, with highlights from the Mariner's shown as examples. A choice quote from the end of the MSR piece.
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Automatically picking out highlights? Cool.
But the "political speeches will become shorter" idea scares the hell out of me. Hiding behind an "artificially" intelligent program would be the perfect way for someone to censor broadcasted information to their own ends.
Glog!
Hell, they can edit out most of the so-called "news" while they're at it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
On a second thought, it's kinda ironic complaining about this as AC.
:-\
Nobody will read it...
Removing the commercials will do the trick.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Talk about a limited test subject... this ought to result in, oh, 15-20 seconds of material from an average game.
Anytime the software detects motion other than just grass growing, crotch scratching and tobacco spitting - that's a highlight. This will still make for a very brief highlight reel for any given game.