December 3, 2025 • 31 mins
In the high-stakes world of sports, referees have always been under intense scrutiny… but what if tech could take some of the pressure off? Or will we lose something by replacing the referee with a robot? In this episode Dexter talks with Joe Lemire, senior writer at Sports Business Journal, to explore how new technologies like Hawk-Eye are reshaping sports officiating.
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Read:
- Joe’s article on automating officiating in sports: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/09/15/how-why-and-whether-to-automate-more-officiating-in-sports-and-what-are-the-trade-offs/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
All right, let me take you back to the Cubs
versus Padres game. And if you're into baseball, you already
know where I'm going with this, because there's really only
one game I could possibly be talking about right now,
Wrigley Field, Game three, the wild Card Series. The San
Diego Padre is going up against the Chicago Cubs, and
this game would decide who moves on to the Division Series.
It's the top of the ninth full count and the
(00:33):
Padres Xander Bogarts is at the plate. Pitcher polls Back
throws a fastball and if you're watching on TV, you
can see the strike zone box and that pitch doesn't
look like it makes it into that box. It looks
real low. Anyway, Bogarts doesn't swing, and since this looks
like it would be ball four, he kind of starts
to take his walk to first base, but then the
(00:55):
umpire calls it a strike.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Detail wayburn just build down, teller and bok yards dosense.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Xander Bogarts is genuinely shocked and that shot turns very
quickly into anger. He slams his back down, He gets
up in the UMP's face. The manager comes out, the
dugout fans are furious. I'm gonna put it democratically in
case any Cubs fans are listening to this. But this
was widely viewed as a questionable call. And this is
(01:27):
where things are gonna get real interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
The umpire called it a strike and no one had
any recourse to change it.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Joelimir is a senior writer at Sports Business Journal.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And that was one where the padres are starting to
rally and or this had a chance to and that
was taken away by this incorrect call.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Players and fans arguing with umpires over a bad call.
That's nothing new. But starting with the twenty twenty sixth season,
the age old tradition of umpires being judged jury an
executioner is going to get a little bit more hazy.
Major League Baseball will have a new challenge system called
the Automated Ball Strike System or the ABS.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I've spoken to Christian Manford about this automated ball Strike system,
what most people call robot umpires. His point to me
has always been, we want to make sure we get
the worst calls overturned. And that's what I've always realized too,
is that fans can be forgiving that humans might make
small mistakes. Here and there, but no one wants the
(02:29):
outcome of the game to be determined by a bad call.
The ABS system won't replace human umpires, but it will
now be used to check their calls a limited amount
of times per game. A player can just tap their
helmet to ask for a review. Matter of fact, speaking
of helmet taps, let's run back some more of that
tape from right after that Xander Bogar's play next year.
(02:49):
That is a helmet tap in a millisecond.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
That right there is the announcers basically agreeing with the
crowd that that sure did not look like a strike.
The Padres lost the game and that was the end
of their season. And after the game, the only silver
lining for Xander Bogart's was the promise that the future
of baseball is about to change.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
We talk about it now. I mean, you know it's
a ball. Yeah, it's just let's up the whole game,
you know what I mean. I can't go back in
time and talking about it now, I won't change anything.
So it was. It was bad, and thank god for
ABS exit because this is CRIL.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Whether we like it or not, Technology is playing a
bigger role in determining who wins and who loses? So
what does it mean to bring automation into something as
human as sports? And how is it changing how we
the fans experience the game? Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This
(03:50):
this is kill Switch. I'm Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I'm all right, goodbye?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Where are we right now? With technology and refereeing in sports.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
For decades now, we've grown accustomed to instant replay, the
use of better cameras to guide the officials and umpires
and making decisions. Tennis was the first one to really
start automating a lot of those calls.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Almost twenty years ago, professional tennis started incorporating a tool
called Hawkeye. Hawkeye is a computer vision system and originally
it's a review tool. A human line judge was still
making the call, but if you thought they were wrong,
you could challenge it and Hawkeye would be used to
check the call and Hawkeye would have the final word.
But since then Hawkeye has gone further than just being
(05:06):
a backup challenge system. Since twenty twenty one, the Australian
Open has used Hawkeye to make calls in all games,
and this year Wimbledon got rid of human line judges. Entirely.
Over the years, other sports have started using similar systems,
and now starting next year, Major League Baseball is getting
one two. Could you break down what Hawkeye is for me?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Their camera system has been generally considered the best attracting
balls or pucks or whatever the object is. They have
these high definition cameras, usually like four K cameras all
around the stadium. They triangulate all the player in bald
movement on the field.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Or quarter or whatever sport you're.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Working on, and then they have these advanced algorithms that
identify its exact location, and Major League Baseball has said
that based on their validation studies, it is accurate to
within a fifth of an inch. Think of like an
eminem and it's like half of that diameter, so very precise.
The consideration when implementing technology.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Like this is it's threefold.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's you want to increase the accuracy of the calls,
you want to increase the speed of the game, and
you want to provide a proper entertainment experience for the fans.
That those are the three considerations, And depending on the
type of sport and the type of competition, you may
choose differently.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
But different sports have different needs. The NFL doesn't use
hawkeye to decide every call in the field. It's mostly
running in the background, and this year it was mainly
there to measure first downs.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
The hawkeye cameras at every NFL stadium have replaced the
chain gang. You know, how antiquated was it that these
guys are running out onto the field carrying two poles
tethered by a ten yard chain and like putting it
down and measuring it to see if it's a first down,
to see if it's a first down. Now the Hawkeye
cameras automate that, and every time they do it, the
NFL says it saves like thirty or forty seconds. At
(06:59):
the moment, it seems like a huge investment for a
very small payoff. But if you're talking like, say thirty seconds,
you know I'd save six minutes every Sunday.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
So it's not like hawkeye has completely changed the modern
game of football. So why are they using it at all? Well,
it might have something to do with the fact that
people are becoming much less okay, with the fact that
human referees are human who can make mistakes. So knowing
that there's some sort of non human neutral arbiter in
the background there somewhere good put fans at ease.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
A number of the reasons for bringing on technology have
been precipitated by an obvious error in a big spot.
There was a US Open match between Serena Williams and
Jennifer Capriotti twenty something years ago where a few terrible
calls against Serena Williams were so bad. Oh no, hawkeye
(07:50):
was now less called out by the lines.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Person and give me a break. Well, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Those bad calls me that like the following year's US Open,
hawkeye was there. There was in the twenty ten World Cup,
England was playing Germany and Frank Lampard scored what anyone
could visibly see was a goal except to the officials
on the field. Here we go, it's so hard look
(08:23):
at that.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You know he was it, We knew he was in.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
And then all of a sudden, goal line technology came about.
And so I think generally the earlier implementations of technology
were because of an outcry of something that was a
terrible call.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Have you seen any high profile mistakes that technology is
made in refereeing.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yes, the technology is certainly not infallible. Anyone who has
a printer knows this. You know, Wimbledon had some high
profile problems with it. That was actually because someone accidentally
turned the system off. It wasn't because the system wasn't
working the way that it was supposed to. Somebody accidentally
toggled the on off switch in the wrong direction. There
have been a few times where you know, leagues or
(09:08):
technology providers have had to say, hey, we got something wrong.
I think particularly there have been a few in software.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So technology assistant refereeing has been pretty successful in tennis
and a lot of people are excited for it to
come to baseball, but soccer shows us where it can
cause some problems.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
VAR and soccer in Europe is probably sort of case
study number one of something that hasn't been as successful
as I think most people thought it might be.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee and it's basically an
instant replay system. VAR has been around for about a decade,
but it's not always popular.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
There is a room off site where a designated official
is studying the different monitors, different angles, different viewpoints, and
in communication with the referee on the pitch to sort
of collaboratively make the decision as to whether or something
needs to get overturned. The issue that a lot of
folks have had is that VAR hasn't always been as
(10:07):
successful in getting calls correct as people would like, and
it also can be kind of a tedious process. Some
of these delays have gone on pretty extensively, and that's
just you know, it disrupts the whole flow of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
A poll by ipso's last year found that half of
English soccer fans believe that VAR has had a negative
impact on their experience of the match. When Joe talks
about those considerations that sports officials need to have when
they're incorporating technology, the accuracy, speed and entertainment, some soccer
fans don't seem to think that it's hidden any of
those metrics properly. A former Premier League referee that we
(10:41):
spoke to said that it's not necessarily always the VAR
itself is that VR is applied inconsistently across matches, and
that VR is really most useful when there's already a
very clear and obvious error that should have been caught.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
There was talk, I believe that within the last two
years whether the Premier League would even fully continue it.
They ultimately decided to keep it, and I think that
was the right decision because even if it's not as
successful as fans would like, it's still better than the alternative,
like going back to just what the human referee sees
in the moment. That's asking an awful lot of one
(11:17):
individual with two eyes covering a field that's just massive.
They don't always have the best vantage point as hard
as they try to, so having an extra support system
is good. At the end of the day, the technology is,
whatever its accuracy level is, it's still going to be
better than what the human eye can see.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So even if it isn't perfect, leagues in almost every
major pro sport are at least experimenting with this kind
of refereeing technology. So how do the referees feel about
this stuff? That's after the break, So how do the
(12:03):
umpires feel about this technology?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, I certainly made some calls to try to speak
to them about this. No one would speak on the record.
The one sort of like public piece of evidence that
we have is that the collective bargain agreement that the
umpires had with the league allows for this to happen.
So even if the Empires didn't want the system, they
agreed to it, right, they have been compensated in some
(12:29):
sort of way that they are on board.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
With the system being implemented. So that's like the only
thing we know for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I think, on one hand, you know, these are competitive people.
You know, if anyone working in sports, whether a player
or otherwise, is going to be competitive, and you know
there's some degree of not wanting to get shown up
by a system. But on the other hand, especially how
often we've seen vitriol spewed at you know, officials and umpires,
I think them not being blamed for a bad call,
(12:55):
the fact that there's now recourse for their biggest mistake
getting corrected, I think in some ways might be a
little bit of a relief.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Now, this is an area where the technology could really
change sports and the culture of how we experience them.
I mean, what would the game be like without the
player referee arguments. I think, just naturally, we always, maybe
not all of us, I'd like to think not all
of us, but a lot of us will find some
reason to blame the umpire, to blame the referees for something.
(13:24):
It's almost like it's part of the game.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, and people cling to that. Like, especially baseball more
than other sports, there has been a almost a celebration
of arguing with the empires. I mean, if you look
back at many of the famous clips in baseball history,
how often do you end up seeing a manager or
a player like John with the Empire. They're going at
it face to face like Noston nose. Sometimes they've been
(13:47):
kicking dirt on the Empire's feet. Now that is they
played umpire Tim mcleland with a bat on his hand.
They might be going to call George bred out, well
he is well, he's out, Yes, look at that Red
is out. Damon Matt he is out.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And having the Babe Usha lay restrained, Rob Henning, why
not buy it? Tom mccond.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
There are all sorts of histrionics and tantrums that have
been thrown that almost became an accepted part of the sport.
And I'm of the opinion that we'll find other traditions
to cling on too. Like I think at the end
of the day, doing your best to strive to minimize
the number of incorrect calls is a far greater good
than clinging to this past relic of umpire arguments.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Og Baseball fans will remember the George Brett Pine Tara incident.
That's from the earlier clip we just played. So fights
like this might be entertaining to watch as a spectator,
but they also make the job of being an umpire
or referee extremely difficult. And in a lot of youth sports,
and remember this is where the future pros first learned
the game, there is a referee shortage between low pay
(14:58):
and parents screaming at them constantly, people just straight up
don't want to be refs anymore.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
The National Federation of High Schools in the in the
US has already described the youth sports referee shortage as
a crisis, and a lot of it is just frank
the parent behavior, or you know, sometimes the athletes themselves,
but there's like a lot of bad behavior directed at
the umpires and officials. Certainly, the prevalence of sports betting
(15:23):
at the highest levels have made that anger and angst
toward officials even higher if someone's got a bet riding
on it.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sports betting is another area of technology that's already changed
how sports are watched. I mean, that's probably an entirely
different episode, but the fact that people are betting on
games might be an argument for more automation and refereeing.
I mean, you don't want to lose a thousand bucks
or more because the umpire made a mistake, And for
umpires and referees themselves, no longer having angry gamblers threatening
(15:55):
you and your DMS could be a nice positive. I mean,
you don't like to call well, hey, don't look at me,
take it up with the machine. And actually, that dynamic
right there has already kind of started to happen in
the early tests of the ABS in baseball.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The first public demonstration of this ABS system was the
Inlanding League's All Star Game. It was in York, Pennsylvania.
The umpire had a little earpiece in his ear and
whatever the system said, just you know, within like a
half second of the pitch, it would tell him whether
it was baller strike and then he would signal it.
And most of the pitches it called were what you
would have expected them to be. There's at least one
(16:30):
pitch that I think everybody in the stadium thought, oh,
the robot made a mistake on it, and so the
player turned toward the empire to argue as he is
accustomed to doing, and then the empire just kind of
pointed at the earpiece being like, hey, it's not my call,
and then it just kind of the budding fury just
was diffused in the moment, like the player was deflated
and he walked slowly back to the dugout.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Really they just said, oh, okay, the robot says, so,
so never mind.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Well, it's like, what's he going to do? Is he
going to argue at a spokesman? At that point, it
wasn't like he's arguing with the decision maker. Nowadays, it's
a camera based system. The Hawkey, that particular one was
a track man radar, and so it's just this like
black rectangle that's hanging above home plate. Are you gonna
yell at.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
A black box? I guess not, Jeez, I guess not.
As Joe puts it, the automated systems can also take
some of the easier calls off the referee's plate and
let them focus on the trickier calls. This could speed
up the game and make the calls that the reps
do make more accurate.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
In a free flowing sport like basketball, hockey soccer, they
have a lot of responsibility. They are looking for a
lot of different infractions. They are looking at a lot
of different calls that they might have to make. So
if you eliminate one or two of those, in theory,
at least they should be able to do the other
ones a little better.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, that I think I can see where people are
uncomfortable with some parts uncomfortable with other parts. But yeah,
there's parts of a referee or an umpire's job that
is pretty binary. Right, is the ball in or out?
Is it a goal or not? There are others where
is that a foul or not? Was an intentional foul?
You know? Soccer? Okay, there was a slide tackle. Were
(18:06):
they going for the ball? Did they just miss the
ball and actually run into the other dude's ankle? Is
this a technical foul? Did use this guy mouthing off?
Or is did he cross the line into saying something
that hey, we really can't have that on the court.
You got to get out of here for a couple
of minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And so that's why tennis is a sport where it's
like a lot of those jobs were purely binary, and
so in many ways those jobs have just simply been
eliminated in other sports. Like all the scenarios you're describing
like reinforces why human officials will always remain important and
mitigating some of these or you know, alleviating the responsibility
(18:44):
of some of these binary calls is where technology can
play a crucial role and being beneficial.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So, yeah, there are some reasons why people might want
automated systems like Hawkeye. Robots are pretty good at following rules,
but sports isn't always about the written rules. There's also
a lot of unwritten ones. I'm even thinking of not
too long ago. I'm watching this clip of Clayton Kershaw's pitching,
(19:11):
and there's a rookie playing and he's up to bat,
and it's clearly the fourth ball. Clinton Kershaw throws the ball,
it's clearly outside the box, and the rookie throws the bat,
I mean throws it all almost all the way to
the dugout, I mean, really flips this thing. He's gonna
take his base. But he does that before the umpire
(19:33):
has made the call. Carol ooh, Carow tossed the bat.
What it was called a strike. Umpire calls it a strike.
It's not a strike. It was not a strike. And
you can hear the announcers essentially suggesting, yeah, you don't
(19:53):
do that.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, there's a certain etiquette of the sport that it
seems to have been ingrain And I think most umpires
are professional and do a great job, but there certainly
have been times where, you know, showing up the empire.
You know, it's not going to help you get the
next call. You know, it's just part of how it works.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I'm looking at the comments and the comments section of
this video, and it's really really interesting because you've got
some people who are saying, we can't get robo umpires
fast enough, like automate this whole thing, because we do
not need all these egos who cares. But then you
got other people saying, hey, this working needs to learn
lesson don't throw the bat and don't do that to
(20:37):
a veteran.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So much of this is baked into the sport, and
I'm sort of surprised how many people like this human
element to it and the tradition part of it. And
that's why Major League Baseball is not It certainly has
the technology that's capable of calling every pitch, but it
has decided on this challenge system because overwhelmingly the league
asked players and fans which kind of system they preferred,
(20:59):
and fans in play were very steadfast and saying they
wanted the challenge system.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So again, not everyone is down with completely removing humans
from judging sports, even if it might result in more
accurate calls.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
There was actually some small protests in Wimbledon this year
when all the line judges had been relieved of their duties,
and so some of the signs were a little clever,
like don't let the bots call the shots, I think
was one of them.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Don't let the bots call the shots.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
They all dressed up as the Wimbledon line judge while
carrying these signs too, so it was a nice touch.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
There are definitely some baseball players who want nothing to
do with this ABS system, really yeah. I mean some
of them are just you know, they're used to one thing.
They're said in their ways, however you want to call it,
and they're used to having a human back there make
the decisions and they don't want that to go away.
I think, especially if you're a star player who has
(21:54):
been getting the benefit of the doubt and there is
some subjectivity, the best picture tend to get more borderline
strike calls than others, So if you're one of those
star pitchers and you're used to getting the benefit of
the doubt. Maybe some of the hitters who were used
to getting you know, questionable calls call the ball in
their favor, and now all of a sudden, the robot's
(22:15):
calling it differently. Some of the change will happen generationally.
The current athletes have grown up with the iPhone in
their hands in a way that you and I didn't.
But certainly some sports have more tradition, more stodgy rules
about them. But the fact that some Major League Baseball
often was the one that had the knock of being
(22:36):
the least progressive because of its adherence to tradition and
the fact that it is now introducing the ABS Challenge
system next year, shows that anybody can change.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So far, these technologies are mostly for objective calls, whether
there's a yes or no answer, and outside of ten is,
no major sport has turned its entire officiating job over
to the machines. But could AI change that. That's after
the break. So as of now, most major league sports
(23:15):
are using Hawkeye or some similar multi camera tracking systems,
but there are also newer technologies coming up in more
niche sports, and these experiments might be paved in the
way for use in the big arenas.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
So one of the sports that we haven't talked about
yet is the X Games. They are moving toward automation
and they're officiating, and you would think when you talk
about like a Winter X Games and you're someone on
the halfpipe, seems like a subjective Oh did he land
that he or she landed that trick? How am I
going to score it? Jeremy Bloom, the former Olympian skier
(23:47):
who runs the X Games now, he actually became personal
friends with Sergey Brinn, the co founder of Google, and
so Sergey Brinn himself started writing the first bits of
code on this, and they hired away a gentleman named
Josh Gwether who used to lead a lot of Google's
AI efforts, and he's now the CEO of a spinoff
company called owl Ai, and they are using from just
(24:08):
one camera angle and then their computer at vision algorithms
to help officiate and score X Games competitions. And so
so far they've only used it in broadcasts just to
explain to fans what the actual human judges are seeing.
But my understanding is that within the next year it
will be like basically like the AI will have its
(24:29):
own vote in what the scoring is, and who knows,
maybe within a few years it'll be fully automated. They
realize that even as subjective as some of these tricks
could be, if you really break down the little small
components of tricks, you can be more objective about the
scoring system than you would have expected. And that's one
example of that sort of technology didn't exist two three
(24:52):
years ago, but the rapid increase in the abilities of
artificial intelligence is driving that kind of processing speed to
make those decisions quickly enough and accurately enough to be meaningful.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And lower levels of major sports are also starting to
experiment with this newer technology. For example, youth sports can't
afford a full hawkeye system, but it turns out that
the technology in our cell phones is already pretty good
at this stuff by itself.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
In junior level tennis, which is sort of like, you know,
teenagers who are at a pretty high level, they are
still calling their own lines, whether it's in or out,
Like there aren't enough you know, line judges to staff
every single cord and every single line. You know, if
you're lucky, you have maybe one umpire overseeing the entire match,
but he or she won't have the best view of
every far corner. And most of the time it's as
(25:42):
I said, it's just the players. And people at the
USTA have told me that the number one reason junior
players quit tennis is because of the cheating, because it's
so rampant about like making bad calls onlines. It's a
very unfortunate environment. And so swing Vision is this app
that you can anyone with an iPhone can use and
(26:04):
you put your camera above the court and if you
and I were to play, we could put it up there.
You just need one iPhone and like if you have
an Apple Watch, you can actually like challenge calls on
your watch and it will show a little little replay here.
And the CEO of swim Vision said that, like if
they use a one camera system, it's like ninety five
percent accurate, but if you put an iPhone on either side,
(26:25):
the algorithms are hey, they have better coverage. And then
it gets up to be ninety eight ninety nine. They're
about to get some sort of International Tennis Federation certification
where they could be used more widespread and organized matches
as a result. But he said when they first started implementing.
At some of these junior tennis tournaments, he had a
parent come up to him and say, your technology is
(26:48):
like so beneficial today. It's the first time I've spoken
to the parent of my son's opponent, and we had
a civil conversation about life and sport, and we weren't
constantly being like angry tense with each other because of
the line calls, and it changed the dynamic. And like, so,
if you can start having technology in a way that
(27:10):
improves the playing environment and allows more people to stay
in the sport, that's a big win.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Technology is going to make a mistake at some point,
just as a human is. There's going to be a
mistake at some point. Do you find that we as
players or fans are more harsh when it's a human
being making a mistake or a machine making mistake?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Paul Hawkins, the Hawkeye founder, his point, and I think
he's right about this, is that people are more forgiving
of a human Like the expectation in the standard that
technology gets held to is much higher, and it's a
much bigger problem when the technology makes a mistake, Like
in some ways it's harder to prove the technology made
(27:53):
a mistake, because usually when a human empire makes a mistake,
we look to the technology to be like, oh, that's
our proof of it.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Is there a point where we might have a traditional
sport like basketball, football, soccer, baseball, whatever, get fully automated
in terms of officiating, no human referees, just get rid
of them all together.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, that one I have a hard time seeing, just
because having a human presence on the field to you know,
let's say two players start arguing with each other and like,
you know, they're about to fight each other. I suppose
we could have a humanoid robot like somebody step in
and but like that seems pretty idea. Yeah, so I
think that's an extreme example. But just there are a
(28:37):
number of examples where we're far away from robots fully
replacing human umpires. But the just like AI can you know,
and anybody's daily office job can help with operational efficiencies
and make you, you know, better at your job overall
by taking something off your plate. I think that's the
kind of relationship we're looking at here, where the umpire
(28:59):
or the official will be able to delegate some of
the work to the machine so they can be better
at the other parts of the job.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Okay, before we close this out, I have two favorites
I want to ask of you. But there's a kind
of a backstory here. First, so I have this really
hazy memory of watching a video game commercial. I want
to say it was the early nineties, and I want
to say that it was like Supernintendo or Sega Genesis
like that era. But anyway, I think the setup is
that there's like a grandpa watching his kid play a
(29:28):
baseball video game, right, and the grandson is playing this
game and he throws the ball to first base in
the game in this digitized voice says, oh, and you know,
the game plays a little jingle, a little tune, and
it goes on to the next inning. But the grandpa
is watching the game and he says, nah, way, that
was safe. What's this umpired thinking lousy bomb in just
going off on it, And I remember thinking, ha ha ha,
(29:51):
this is funny because Grandpa doesn't understand this is a
video game. Video games and machines, they don't make mistakes
on a call. And that was like the whole joke,
the whole setup of the commercial. It never occurred to
me that we would have actual machines judging the real sports.
So my first request is I would love to hear
from other people who watch or who play sports. What
(30:13):
do you think about automated refereeing? What would you think
about seeing it in your favorite sport. You can email
us at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram.
We're at kill Switch Pod. I'm gonna be posting about
this a lot also my personal account at dex digi,
and I'm really interested in seeing what people think. And
(30:34):
my second ask is, if you know what this game is,
please tell me. I don't think I made this up
at a thin air, but I'm starting to think that
maybe I just hallucinated it, and you would make me
feel a lot better if you can actually tell me
what this commercial is. So if you can tell me
what it is, please find a way to comment it
to us. I will shout you out in the next episode.
And I'm very serious about this anyway. Thank you for
(30:59):
making it to the end of another episode of kill Switch,
which is hosted by me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by
Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Julian Nutter. Also shout out
to Alexanderveld, who helped produce today's episode. Our theme song
is by Me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixed
the show. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Oz balashin On,
(31:21):
Gesha Jigadur, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers
are Katrina Norville and Nikki Etur. And that's it from
US Catch in the next one.
All right, let me take you back to the Cubs
versus Padres game. And if you're into baseball, you already
know where I'm going with this, because there's really only
one game I could possibly be talking about right now,
Wrigley Field, Game three, the wild Card Series. The San
Diego Padre is going up against the Chicago Cubs, and
this game would decide who moves on to the Division Series.
It's the top of the ninth full count and the
(00:33):
Padres Xander Bogarts is at the plate. Pitcher polls Back
throws a fastball and if you're watching on TV, you
can see the strike zone box and that pitch doesn't
look like it makes it into that box. It looks
real low. Anyway, Bogarts doesn't swing, and since this looks
like it would be ball four, he kind of starts
to take his walk to first base, but then the
(00:55):
umpire calls it a strike.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Detail wayburn just build down, teller and bok yards dosense.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Xander Bogarts is genuinely shocked and that shot turns very
quickly into anger. He slams his back down, He gets
up in the UMP's face. The manager comes out, the
dugout fans are furious. I'm gonna put it democratically in
case any Cubs fans are listening to this. But this
was widely viewed as a questionable call. And this is
(01:27):
where things are gonna get real interesting.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
The umpire called it a strike and no one had
any recourse to change it.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Joelimir is a senior writer at Sports Business Journal.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And that was one where the padres are starting to
rally and or this had a chance to and that
was taken away by this incorrect call.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Players and fans arguing with umpires over a bad call.
That's nothing new. But starting with the twenty twenty sixth season,
the age old tradition of umpires being judged jury an
executioner is going to get a little bit more hazy.
Major League Baseball will have a new challenge system called
the Automated Ball Strike System or the ABS.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
I've spoken to Christian Manford about this automated ball Strike system,
what most people call robot umpires. His point to me
has always been, we want to make sure we get
the worst calls overturned. And that's what I've always realized too,
is that fans can be forgiving that humans might make
small mistakes. Here and there, but no one wants the
(02:29):
outcome of the game to be determined by a bad call.
The ABS system won't replace human umpires, but it will
now be used to check their calls a limited amount
of times per game. A player can just tap their
helmet to ask for a review. Matter of fact, speaking
of helmet taps, let's run back some more of that
tape from right after that Xander Bogar's play next year.
(02:49):
That is a helmet tap in a millisecond.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
That right there is the announcers basically agreeing with the
crowd that that sure did not look like a strike.
The Padres lost the game and that was the end
of their season. And after the game, the only silver
lining for Xander Bogart's was the promise that the future
of baseball is about to change.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
We talk about it now. I mean, you know it's
a ball. Yeah, it's just let's up the whole game,
you know what I mean. I can't go back in
time and talking about it now, I won't change anything.
So it was. It was bad, and thank god for
ABS exit because this is CRIL.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Whether we like it or not, Technology is playing a
bigger role in determining who wins and who loses? So
what does it mean to bring automation into something as
human as sports? And how is it changing how we
the fans experience the game? Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This
(03:50):
this is kill Switch. I'm Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I'm all right, goodbye?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Where are we right now? With technology and refereeing in sports.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
For decades now, we've grown accustomed to instant replay, the
use of better cameras to guide the officials and umpires
and making decisions. Tennis was the first one to really
start automating a lot of those calls.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Almost twenty years ago, professional tennis started incorporating a tool
called Hawkeye. Hawkeye is a computer vision system and originally
it's a review tool. A human line judge was still
making the call, but if you thought they were wrong,
you could challenge it and Hawkeye would be used to
check the call and Hawkeye would have the final word.
But since then Hawkeye has gone further than just being
(05:06):
a backup challenge system. Since twenty twenty one, the Australian
Open has used Hawkeye to make calls in all games,
and this year Wimbledon got rid of human line judges. Entirely.
Over the years, other sports have started using similar systems,
and now starting next year, Major League Baseball is getting
one two. Could you break down what Hawkeye is for me?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Their camera system has been generally considered the best attracting
balls or pucks or whatever the object is. They have
these high definition cameras, usually like four K cameras all
around the stadium. They triangulate all the player in bald
movement on the field.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Or quarter or whatever sport you're.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Working on, and then they have these advanced algorithms that
identify its exact location, and Major League Baseball has said
that based on their validation studies, it is accurate to
within a fifth of an inch. Think of like an
eminem and it's like half of that diameter, so very precise.
The consideration when implementing technology.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Like this is it's threefold.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's you want to increase the accuracy of the calls,
you want to increase the speed of the game, and
you want to provide a proper entertainment experience for the fans.
That those are the three considerations, And depending on the
type of sport and the type of competition, you may
choose differently.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
But different sports have different needs. The NFL doesn't use
hawkeye to decide every call in the field. It's mostly
running in the background, and this year it was mainly
there to measure first downs.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
The hawkeye cameras at every NFL stadium have replaced the
chain gang. You know, how antiquated was it that these
guys are running out onto the field carrying two poles
tethered by a ten yard chain and like putting it
down and measuring it to see if it's a first down,
to see if it's a first down. Now the Hawkeye
cameras automate that, and every time they do it, the
NFL says it saves like thirty or forty seconds. At
(06:59):
the moment, it seems like a huge investment for a
very small payoff. But if you're talking like, say thirty seconds,
you know I'd save six minutes every Sunday.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
So it's not like hawkeye has completely changed the modern
game of football. So why are they using it at all? Well,
it might have something to do with the fact that
people are becoming much less okay, with the fact that
human referees are human who can make mistakes. So knowing
that there's some sort of non human neutral arbiter in
the background there somewhere good put fans at ease.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
A number of the reasons for bringing on technology have
been precipitated by an obvious error in a big spot.
There was a US Open match between Serena Williams and
Jennifer Capriotti twenty something years ago where a few terrible
calls against Serena Williams were so bad. Oh no, hawkeye
(07:50):
was now less called out by the lines.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Person and give me a break. Well, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Those bad calls me that like the following year's US Open,
hawkeye was there. There was in the twenty ten World Cup,
England was playing Germany and Frank Lampard scored what anyone
could visibly see was a goal except to the officials
on the field. Here we go, it's so hard look
(08:23):
at that.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You know he was it, We knew he was in.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
And then all of a sudden, goal line technology came about.
And so I think generally the earlier implementations of technology
were because of an outcry of something that was a
terrible call.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Have you seen any high profile mistakes that technology is
made in refereeing.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yes, the technology is certainly not infallible. Anyone who has
a printer knows this. You know, Wimbledon had some high
profile problems with it. That was actually because someone accidentally
turned the system off. It wasn't because the system wasn't
working the way that it was supposed to. Somebody accidentally
toggled the on off switch in the wrong direction. There
have been a few times where you know, leagues or
(09:08):
technology providers have had to say, hey, we got something wrong.
I think particularly there have been a few in software.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So technology assistant refereeing has been pretty successful in tennis
and a lot of people are excited for it to
come to baseball, but soccer shows us where it can
cause some problems.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
VAR and soccer in Europe is probably sort of case
study number one of something that hasn't been as successful
as I think most people thought it might be.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee and it's basically an
instant replay system. VAR has been around for about a decade,
but it's not always popular.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
There is a room off site where a designated official
is studying the different monitors, different angles, different viewpoints, and
in communication with the referee on the pitch to sort
of collaboratively make the decision as to whether or something
needs to get overturned. The issue that a lot of
folks have had is that VAR hasn't always been as
(10:07):
successful in getting calls correct as people would like, and
it also can be kind of a tedious process. Some
of these delays have gone on pretty extensively, and that's
just you know, it disrupts the whole flow of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
A poll by ipso's last year found that half of
English soccer fans believe that VAR has had a negative
impact on their experience of the match. When Joe talks
about those considerations that sports officials need to have when
they're incorporating technology, the accuracy, speed and entertainment, some soccer
fans don't seem to think that it's hidden any of
those metrics properly. A former Premier League referee that we
(10:41):
spoke to said that it's not necessarily always the VAR
itself is that VR is applied inconsistently across matches, and
that VR is really most useful when there's already a
very clear and obvious error that should have been caught.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
There was talk, I believe that within the last two
years whether the Premier League would even fully continue it.
They ultimately decided to keep it, and I think that
was the right decision because even if it's not as
successful as fans would like, it's still better than the alternative,
like going back to just what the human referee sees
in the moment. That's asking an awful lot of one
(11:17):
individual with two eyes covering a field that's just massive.
They don't always have the best vantage point as hard
as they try to, so having an extra support system
is good. At the end of the day, the technology is,
whatever its accuracy level is, it's still going to be
better than what the human eye can see.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So even if it isn't perfect, leagues in almost every
major pro sport are at least experimenting with this kind
of refereeing technology. So how do the referees feel about
this stuff? That's after the break, So how do the
(12:03):
umpires feel about this technology?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, I certainly made some calls to try to speak
to them about this. No one would speak on the record.
The one sort of like public piece of evidence that
we have is that the collective bargain agreement that the
umpires had with the league allows for this to happen.
So even if the Empires didn't want the system, they
agreed to it, right, they have been compensated in some
(12:29):
sort of way that they are on board.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
With the system being implemented. So that's like the only
thing we know for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I think, on one hand, you know, these are competitive people.
You know, if anyone working in sports, whether a player
or otherwise, is going to be competitive, and you know
there's some degree of not wanting to get shown up
by a system. But on the other hand, especially how
often we've seen vitriol spewed at you know, officials and umpires,
I think them not being blamed for a bad call,
(12:55):
the fact that there's now recourse for their biggest mistake
getting corrected, I think in some ways might be a
little bit of a relief.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Now, this is an area where the technology could really
change sports and the culture of how we experience them.
I mean, what would the game be like without the
player referee arguments. I think, just naturally, we always, maybe
not all of us, I'd like to think not all
of us, but a lot of us will find some
reason to blame the umpire, to blame the referees for something.
(13:24):
It's almost like it's part of the game.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, and people cling to that. Like, especially baseball more
than other sports, there has been a almost a celebration
of arguing with the empires. I mean, if you look
back at many of the famous clips in baseball history,
how often do you end up seeing a manager or
a player like John with the Empire. They're going at
it face to face like Noston nose. Sometimes they've been
(13:47):
kicking dirt on the Empire's feet. Now that is they
played umpire Tim mcleland with a bat on his hand.
They might be going to call George bred out, well
he is well, he's out, Yes, look at that Red
is out. Damon Matt he is out.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And having the Babe Usha lay restrained, Rob Henning, why
not buy it? Tom mccond.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
There are all sorts of histrionics and tantrums that have
been thrown that almost became an accepted part of the sport.
And I'm of the opinion that we'll find other traditions
to cling on too. Like I think at the end
of the day, doing your best to strive to minimize
the number of incorrect calls is a far greater good
than clinging to this past relic of umpire arguments.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Og Baseball fans will remember the George Brett Pine Tara incident.
That's from the earlier clip we just played. So fights
like this might be entertaining to watch as a spectator,
but they also make the job of being an umpire
or referee extremely difficult. And in a lot of youth sports,
and remember this is where the future pros first learned
the game, there is a referee shortage between low pay
(14:58):
and parents screaming at them constantly, people just straight up
don't want to be refs anymore.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
The National Federation of High Schools in the in the
US has already described the youth sports referee shortage as
a crisis, and a lot of it is just frank
the parent behavior, or you know, sometimes the athletes themselves,
but there's like a lot of bad behavior directed at
the umpires and officials. Certainly, the prevalence of sports betting
(15:23):
at the highest levels have made that anger and angst
toward officials even higher if someone's got a bet riding
on it.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sports betting is another area of technology that's already changed
how sports are watched. I mean, that's probably an entirely
different episode, but the fact that people are betting on
games might be an argument for more automation and refereeing.
I mean, you don't want to lose a thousand bucks
or more because the umpire made a mistake, And for
umpires and referees themselves, no longer having angry gamblers threatening
(15:55):
you and your DMS could be a nice positive. I mean,
you don't like to call well, hey, don't look at me,
take it up with the machine. And actually, that dynamic
right there has already kind of started to happen in
the early tests of the ABS in baseball.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
The first public demonstration of this ABS system was the
Inlanding League's All Star Game. It was in York, Pennsylvania.
The umpire had a little earpiece in his ear and
whatever the system said, just you know, within like a
half second of the pitch, it would tell him whether
it was baller strike and then he would signal it.
And most of the pitches it called were what you
would have expected them to be. There's at least one
(16:30):
pitch that I think everybody in the stadium thought, oh,
the robot made a mistake on it, and so the
player turned toward the empire to argue as he is
accustomed to doing, and then the empire just kind of
pointed at the earpiece being like, hey, it's not my call,
and then it just kind of the budding fury just
was diffused in the moment, like the player was deflated
and he walked slowly back to the dugout.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Really they just said, oh, okay, the robot says, so,
so never mind.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Well, it's like, what's he going to do? Is he
going to argue at a spokesman? At that point, it
wasn't like he's arguing with the decision maker. Nowadays, it's
a camera based system. The Hawkey, that particular one was
a track man radar, and so it's just this like
black rectangle that's hanging above home plate. Are you gonna
yell at.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
A black box? I guess not, Jeez, I guess not.
As Joe puts it, the automated systems can also take
some of the easier calls off the referee's plate and
let them focus on the trickier calls. This could speed
up the game and make the calls that the reps
do make more accurate.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
In a free flowing sport like basketball, hockey soccer, they
have a lot of responsibility. They are looking for a
lot of different infractions. They are looking at a lot
of different calls that they might have to make. So
if you eliminate one or two of those, in theory,
at least they should be able to do the other
ones a little better.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, that I think I can see where people are
uncomfortable with some parts uncomfortable with other parts. But yeah,
there's parts of a referee or an umpire's job that
is pretty binary. Right, is the ball in or out?
Is it a goal or not? There are others where
is that a foul or not? Was an intentional foul?
You know? Soccer? Okay, there was a slide tackle. Were
(18:06):
they going for the ball? Did they just miss the
ball and actually run into the other dude's ankle? Is
this a technical foul? Did use this guy mouthing off?
Or is did he cross the line into saying something
that hey, we really can't have that on the court.
You got to get out of here for a couple
of minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
And so that's why tennis is a sport where it's
like a lot of those jobs were purely binary, and
so in many ways those jobs have just simply been
eliminated in other sports. Like all the scenarios you're describing
like reinforces why human officials will always remain important and
mitigating some of these or you know, alleviating the responsibility
(18:44):
of some of these binary calls is where technology can
play a crucial role and being beneficial.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So, yeah, there are some reasons why people might want
automated systems like Hawkeye. Robots are pretty good at following rules,
but sports isn't always about the written rules. There's also
a lot of unwritten ones. I'm even thinking of not
too long ago. I'm watching this clip of Clayton Kershaw's pitching,
(19:11):
and there's a rookie playing and he's up to bat,
and it's clearly the fourth ball. Clinton Kershaw throws the ball,
it's clearly outside the box, and the rookie throws the bat,
I mean throws it all almost all the way to
the dugout, I mean, really flips this thing. He's gonna
take his base. But he does that before the umpire
(19:33):
has made the call. Carol ooh, Carow tossed the bat.
What it was called a strike. Umpire calls it a strike.
It's not a strike. It was not a strike. And
you can hear the announcers essentially suggesting, yeah, you don't
(19:53):
do that.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, there's a certain etiquette of the sport that it
seems to have been ingrain And I think most umpires
are professional and do a great job, but there certainly
have been times where, you know, showing up the empire.
You know, it's not going to help you get the
next call. You know, it's just part of how it works.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I'm looking at the comments and the comments section of
this video, and it's really really interesting because you've got
some people who are saying, we can't get robo umpires
fast enough, like automate this whole thing, because we do
not need all these egos who cares. But then you
got other people saying, hey, this working needs to learn
lesson don't throw the bat and don't do that to
(20:37):
a veteran.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So much of this is baked into the sport, and
I'm sort of surprised how many people like this human
element to it and the tradition part of it. And
that's why Major League Baseball is not It certainly has
the technology that's capable of calling every pitch, but it
has decided on this challenge system because overwhelmingly the league
asked players and fans which kind of system they preferred,
(20:59):
and fans in play were very steadfast and saying they
wanted the challenge system.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So again, not everyone is down with completely removing humans
from judging sports, even if it might result in more
accurate calls.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
There was actually some small protests in Wimbledon this year
when all the line judges had been relieved of their duties,
and so some of the signs were a little clever,
like don't let the bots call the shots, I think
was one of them.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Don't let the bots call the shots.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
They all dressed up as the Wimbledon line judge while
carrying these signs too, so it was a nice touch.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
There are definitely some baseball players who want nothing to
do with this ABS system, really yeah. I mean some
of them are just you know, they're used to one thing.
They're said in their ways, however you want to call it,
and they're used to having a human back there make
the decisions and they don't want that to go away.
I think, especially if you're a star player who has
(21:54):
been getting the benefit of the doubt and there is
some subjectivity, the best picture tend to get more borderline
strike calls than others, So if you're one of those
star pitchers and you're used to getting the benefit of
the doubt. Maybe some of the hitters who were used
to getting you know, questionable calls call the ball in
their favor, and now all of a sudden, the robot's
(22:15):
calling it differently. Some of the change will happen generationally.
The current athletes have grown up with the iPhone in
their hands in a way that you and I didn't.
But certainly some sports have more tradition, more stodgy rules
about them. But the fact that some Major League Baseball
often was the one that had the knock of being
(22:36):
the least progressive because of its adherence to tradition and
the fact that it is now introducing the ABS Challenge
system next year, shows that anybody can change.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So far, these technologies are mostly for objective calls, whether
there's a yes or no answer, and outside of ten is,
no major sport has turned its entire officiating job over
to the machines. But could AI change that. That's after
the break. So as of now, most major league sports
(23:15):
are using Hawkeye or some similar multi camera tracking systems,
but there are also newer technologies coming up in more
niche sports, and these experiments might be paved in the
way for use in the big arenas.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
So one of the sports that we haven't talked about
yet is the X Games. They are moving toward automation
and they're officiating, and you would think when you talk
about like a Winter X Games and you're someone on
the halfpipe, seems like a subjective Oh did he land
that he or she landed that trick? How am I
going to score it? Jeremy Bloom, the former Olympian skier
(23:47):
who runs the X Games now, he actually became personal
friends with Sergey Brinn, the co founder of Google, and
so Sergey Brinn himself started writing the first bits of
code on this, and they hired away a gentleman named
Josh Gwether who used to lead a lot of Google's
AI efforts, and he's now the CEO of a spinoff
company called owl Ai, and they are using from just
(24:08):
one camera angle and then their computer at vision algorithms
to help officiate and score X Games competitions. And so
so far they've only used it in broadcasts just to
explain to fans what the actual human judges are seeing.
But my understanding is that within the next year it
will be like basically like the AI will have its
(24:29):
own vote in what the scoring is, and who knows,
maybe within a few years it'll be fully automated. They
realize that even as subjective as some of these tricks
could be, if you really break down the little small
components of tricks, you can be more objective about the
scoring system than you would have expected. And that's one
example of that sort of technology didn't exist two three
(24:52):
years ago, but the rapid increase in the abilities of
artificial intelligence is driving that kind of processing speed to
make those decisions quickly enough and accurately enough to be meaningful.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
And lower levels of major sports are also starting to
experiment with this newer technology. For example, youth sports can't
afford a full hawkeye system, but it turns out that
the technology in our cell phones is already pretty good
at this stuff by itself.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
In junior level tennis, which is sort of like, you know,
teenagers who are at a pretty high level, they are
still calling their own lines, whether it's in or out,
Like there aren't enough you know, line judges to staff
every single cord and every single line. You know, if
you're lucky, you have maybe one umpire overseeing the entire match,
but he or she won't have the best view of
every far corner. And most of the time it's as
(25:42):
I said, it's just the players. And people at the
USTA have told me that the number one reason junior
players quit tennis is because of the cheating, because it's
so rampant about like making bad calls onlines. It's a
very unfortunate environment. And so swing Vision is this app
that you can anyone with an iPhone can use and
(26:04):
you put your camera above the court and if you
and I were to play, we could put it up there.
You just need one iPhone and like if you have
an Apple Watch, you can actually like challenge calls on
your watch and it will show a little little replay here.
And the CEO of swim Vision said that, like if
they use a one camera system, it's like ninety five
percent accurate, but if you put an iPhone on either side,
(26:25):
the algorithms are hey, they have better coverage. And then
it gets up to be ninety eight ninety nine. They're
about to get some sort of International Tennis Federation certification
where they could be used more widespread and organized matches
as a result. But he said when they first started implementing.
At some of these junior tennis tournaments, he had a
parent come up to him and say, your technology is
(26:48):
like so beneficial today. It's the first time I've spoken
to the parent of my son's opponent, and we had
a civil conversation about life and sport, and we weren't
constantly being like angry tense with each other because of
the line calls, and it changed the dynamic. And like, so,
if you can start having technology in a way that
(27:10):
improves the playing environment and allows more people to stay
in the sport, that's a big win.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Technology is going to make a mistake at some point,
just as a human is. There's going to be a
mistake at some point. Do you find that we as
players or fans are more harsh when it's a human
being making a mistake or a machine making mistake?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Paul Hawkins, the Hawkeye founder, his point, and I think
he's right about this, is that people are more forgiving
of a human Like the expectation in the standard that
technology gets held to is much higher, and it's a
much bigger problem when the technology makes a mistake, Like
in some ways it's harder to prove the technology made
(27:53):
a mistake, because usually when a human empire makes a mistake,
we look to the technology to be like, oh, that's
our proof of it.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Is there a point where we might have a traditional
sport like basketball, football, soccer, baseball, whatever, get fully automated
in terms of officiating, no human referees, just get rid
of them all together.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Yeah, that one I have a hard time seeing, just
because having a human presence on the field to you know,
let's say two players start arguing with each other and like,
you know, they're about to fight each other. I suppose
we could have a humanoid robot like somebody step in
and but like that seems pretty idea. Yeah, so I
think that's an extreme example. But just there are a
(28:37):
number of examples where we're far away from robots fully
replacing human umpires. But the just like AI can you know,
and anybody's daily office job can help with operational efficiencies
and make you, you know, better at your job overall
by taking something off your plate. I think that's the
kind of relationship we're looking at here, where the umpire
(28:59):
or the official will be able to delegate some of
the work to the machine so they can be better
at the other parts of the job.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Okay, before we close this out, I have two favorites
I want to ask of you. But there's a kind
of a backstory here. First, so I have this really
hazy memory of watching a video game commercial. I want
to say it was the early nineties, and I want
to say that it was like Supernintendo or Sega Genesis
like that era. But anyway, I think the setup is
that there's like a grandpa watching his kid play a
(29:28):
baseball video game, right, and the grandson is playing this
game and he throws the ball to first base in
the game in this digitized voice says, oh, and you know,
the game plays a little jingle, a little tune, and
it goes on to the next inning. But the grandpa
is watching the game and he says, nah, way, that
was safe. What's this umpired thinking lousy bomb in just
going off on it, And I remember thinking, ha ha ha,
(29:51):
this is funny because Grandpa doesn't understand this is a
video game. Video games and machines, they don't make mistakes
on a call. And that was like the whole joke,
the whole setup of the commercial. It never occurred to
me that we would have actual machines judging the real sports.
So my first request is I would love to hear
from other people who watch or who play sports. What
(30:13):
do you think about automated refereeing? What would you think
about seeing it in your favorite sport. You can email
us at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram.
We're at kill Switch Pod. I'm gonna be posting about
this a lot also my personal account at dex digi,
and I'm really interested in seeing what people think. And
(30:34):
my second ask is, if you know what this game is,
please tell me. I don't think I made this up
at a thin air, but I'm starting to think that
maybe I just hallucinated it, and you would make me
feel a lot better if you can actually tell me
what this commercial is. So if you can tell me
what it is, please find a way to comment it
to us. I will shout you out in the next episode.
And I'm very serious about this anyway. Thank you for
(30:59):
making it to the end of another episode of kill Switch,
which is hosted by me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by
Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Julian Nutter. Also shout out
to Alexanderveld, who helped produce today's episode. Our theme song
is by Me and Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixed
the show. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Oz balashin On,
(31:21):
Gesha Jigadur, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers
are Katrina Norville and Nikki Etur. And that's it from
US Catch in the next one.
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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