AI-powered app for measuring/tracking jump metrics

[DizzyFrenchie]

That does illustrate one sad fact, though. From a marketing point of view the one universal constant that can be relied on is that all figure skaters automatically think that the judges are unfair to them, and thus are good candidates to be fished for.

I rather see it as showing that unfair judging is one of the expressions often found in Figure Skating discussions?

As to your "I feel so human" it reminded me an imitation of AI in a comment on Yuzuru Hanyu's Short Program at 2020 All-Japan National Championships (with fan self-directed humour which may please you?):

- YouTube

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youtu.be

 

[Mathman]

I rather see it as showing that unfair judging is one of the expressions often found in Figure Skating discussions?

I think it's just human nature. We don't like to be "judged." In a big figure skating contest there is one winner and 20 losers. So quite naturally there is one person who thinks that the judging was fair and 20 people who think that the mean judges are picking on me.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

About computer vision, here's an interesting historical factoid. A pioneer in this field, recognized in retrospect, was Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse in the Crimean War (1850s) who was also the first woman elected to the Royal Statistical Society. She invented the circular histogram for representing digital data visually, a technique that robotics people relied on in the 1990s to teach a robot how to move about without running into objects in its path.

I forgot to answer you on this... completely out of topic. Lately, a man working with lots of Statistics had the reflexion that while Florence Nightingale was certainly overhyped as a nurse (but how she worked was a lot given the Nightingales' family history and her country's culture as a whole), she was less acknowledged as an organiser, and above all, quite unacknowledged for what she brought to Statistics, which as far as I know, she had never studied formally. I'm happy that at least she was elected to the Royal Statistical Society, that is, recognized by her contemporary peers. I tend to suppose that the hype as a nurse and ignoring her Statistics works had to do with XIXth Century's strength in gender prejudice.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

I think it's just human nature. We don't like to be "judged." In a big figure skating contest there is one winner and 20 losers. So quite naturally there is one person who thinks that the judging was fair and 20 people who think that the mean judges are picking on me.

Do you think that this accounts for a really significant part of the use of the expression? I have seen it very occasionally used wrongly, but for me, the large majority of its use is when the fact does happen. But I follow chiefly Singles, and I have so very little notion about Ice Dance scoring. It's true that in French media, in the 6.0 era, one could hear or read such complaints whenever the French Ice Dance team of the day hadn't won. But I don't see it anymore. I do see complaints about Ice Dance scoring on social media or fora, maybe they're legitimate, maybe they're not...

 

[lariko]

Even I've got a couple of those, and my partner and I just perform at our club. We toy with the idea of adult competition, but not with enough enthusiasm to actually do it. I guess our names are picked out of the club's newsletter and various posts, but when I see remarks about how "the judging is so unfair" to us and how this ersatz person could help improve our style, I just laugh and delete.

(I get them as a writer/storyteller too. Do they offer to be your agent and help you find a publisher, or to self-publish? Thanks, but no thanks even if they were legit. Been there, done that in the newspaper world, for too many years in the past.)

If they still offer you promotions, then they are behind the time. We are through this phase and plagued by digital artists, turning your wonderful book into a comic, cinematic reels and character art. Since, obviously, image generating AI advanced past seven fingers and no neck stage.

But yeah, all advertisement works on a combo of insecurity and flattery, and AI just generates the same pattern in the spam.

 

[yuki@thelake]

The ISU has contracted MIT Sports Lab (with Jerry Lu of OOfSkate involvement) to create the AI software for judging

 

[Mathman]

Oh boy, here we go again!

What I wish is that we had a better definition of "intelligent."

But where does the artificial intelligence part come in?

Doesn't it say clearly that it uses Computer Vision to come up with all the stats and landing quality?

Many creatures have good eyesight and are capable of processing what they see to their advantage. Are they intelligent?

Just to make sure I Googled, "What insect has the best eyesight." Answer: the dragonfly. Each eye has 30,000 separate lenses. Dragonflies can see in the ultraviolet. The can process visual information at the rate of 300 frames per second (faster than humans). Are dragonflies iclassified as "intelligent" because of this ability?

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

The ISU has contracted MIT Sports Lab (with Jerry Lu of OOfSkate involvement) to create the AI software for judging

Why processing to AI before checking any measurement?
I won't name the (big) brand but when you drive a car which doesn't know a whole part of the map of where you are (I mean, inside the country you've bought it, and inside the country of making!), and pretend that you're still in their reduced map and stop your car brutally on the highway because they believe that you have left your small country road for a field or brutally accelerate and you can't switch off the thing, or they approach you dangerously close to the car ahead and you can manage to curb (brutally!) your car only at 10m from the car ahead, ignore a temporary limitation for works or the new place of the limitation sign and prevents you from avoiding a radar catch and so on... That's a massive scandal, I suppose that it's about to explode, and it's something as widespread and expensive as cars... AI isn't ready at all for anything with "responsibilities", let alone something made cheap for a system which has never been measured previously? Couldn't there be automated measurement before completely killing Figure Skating?

 

[Mathman]

Wait, wait. I take it all back. I just Googled "Are dragonflies intelligent?"

Google AI overview caustically informed me: "Yes, dragonflies are considered highly intelligent, particularly in the context of hunting and spatial awareness. Researchers have found that they possess advanced neural mechanisms that allow them to perform complex, predatory behaviors previously thought to be limited to higher-order vertebrates. So put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, you human Chauvinist."

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Wait, wait. I take it all back. I just Googled "Are dragonflies intelligent?"

Google AI overview caustically informed me: "Yes, dragonflies are considered highly intelligent, particularly in the context of hunting and spatial awareness. Researchers have found that they possess advanced neural mechanisms that allow them to perform complex, predatory behaviors previously thought to be limited to higher-order vertebrates. So put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, you human Chauvinist."

Humans can draw dragonflies, though they can't completely emulate them. Ask a dragonfly to draw an human?

https://monsieur-de-france.com/media/cache/ludodev_compress_webp/uploads/images/960px-musee-de-l-ecole-de-nancy-victor-prouve-portrait-of-emile-galle-1767699474.jpg

https://www.anticstore.com/DocBD/commerce/antiquaire/anthony-scisco-888/objet/96380/AnticStore-Large-Ref-96380_04.jpg

Sorry, this was a pretext. My real purpose was chauvinist.

 

[Anna K.]

The ISU has contracted MIT Sports Lab (with Jerry Lu of OOfSkate involvement) to create the AI software for judging

I understand that your source is this article (I could not find any other publication):

Harnessing the power of AI to help revolutionize Olympic-level figure skating

American figure skater Andrew Torgashev was at an invitation-only camp organized by U.S. Figure Skating not long ago, a chance for elite athletes preparing for the high-level Grand Prix season to work out any flaws in their performances.

www.ksl.com

 

[Mathematician]

Oh boy, here we go again!

What I wish is that we had a better definition of "intelligent."





Many creatures have good eyesight and are capable of processing what they see to their advantage. Are they intelligent?

Just to make sure I Googled, "What insect has the best eyesight." Answer: the dragonfly. Each eye has 30,000 separate lenses. Dragonflies can see in the ultraviolet. The can process visual information at the rate of 300 frames per second (faster than humans). Are dragonflies iclassified as "intelligent" because of this ability?

Is the implication supposed to be that dragonflies are obviously not intelligent or something? Aren't pretty much all organisms intelligent? I feel like dragonflies are pretty high up on the hierarchy regarding complexity if we look at the orchard of life...

 

[Mathman]

Is the implication supposed to be that dragonflies are obviously not intelligent or something?

No, the point I was hoping to make is that, to me, we do not have a sufficiently precise understanding of what counts as "intelligent" behavior..

What computers are really, really, really, really good at is storage, organization and retrieval of data. Like a gigantic filing cabinet. Are filing cabinets "intelligent"?

If a dragonfly could add up a column of a million numbers in a thousandth of a second and never make a mistake, as a computer can, we would say, hoo boy, that's one intelligent dragonfly. I for one feel handicapped in discussions of artificial intelligence because I cannot resolve in my mind (my what?) exactly what it is we are really talking about.

To me, it is is stupid to start a war. Was Julius Caesar a stupid man? It just seems like we use this term "intelligence" as a catch-all that means anything we want it to mean at the moment.

As applied to figure skating (as in the title of this thread) most discussions of artificial "intelligence" are really about using technology to achieve more precise and reliable measurements. But are yardsticks, protractors, stop watches and cameras "intelligent"? I will ask my "smart" phone and see what she answers.

Added in proof: OK, I just found out the answer. I Googled "Is a camera intelligent?" Google AI Overview informed me, "Yes, many modern cameras are considered intelligent due to the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology."

I have my answer: the definition of artificial intelligence is, something that incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI). Somehow, this definition makes me sad.

 

[Mathematician]

No, the point I was hoping to make is that, to me, we do not have a sufficiently precise understanding of what counts as "intelligent" behavior..

What computers are really, really, really, really good at is storage, organization and retrieval of data. Like a gigantic filing cabinet. Are filing cabinets "intelligent"?

If a dragonfly could add up a column of a million numbers in a thousandth of a second and never make a mistake, as a computer can, we would say, hoo boy, that's one intelligent dragonfly. I for one feel handicapped in discussions of artificial intelligence because I cannot resolve in my mind (my what?) exactly what it is we are really talking about.

To me, it is is stupid to start a war. Was Julius Caesar a stupid man? It just seems like we use this term "intelligence" as a catch-all that means anything we want it to mean at the moment.

As applied to figure skating (as in the title of this thread) most discussions of artificial "intelligence" are really about using technology to achieve more precise and reliable measurements. But are yardsticks, protractors, stop watches and cameras "intelligent"? I will ask my "smart" phone and see what she answers.

Added in proof: OK, I just found out the answer. I Googled "Is a camera intelligent?" Google AI Overview informed me, "Yes, many modern cameras are considered intelligent due to the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology."

I have my answer: the definition of artificial intelligence is, something that incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI). Somehow, this definition makes me sad.

I think intelligence in the way we are colloquially referencing it is inextricable from the idea of consciousness which is indeed philosophically nebulous.

But I went looking and I'm sort of surprised there isn't a technical definition that's admittedly limited to LLMs, sort of how we have Shannon Entropy defining information in the context of digital storage. Unfortunately it seems even in the term AI, intelligence isn't well defined... It's just as colloquial as its normal usage.

All of this is probably just a case of equivocation. I think the term artificial intelligence itself is pretty edifying when it comes to computer processes and LLMs which are quite different from "biological" or "conscious" intelligence, but then alongside the idea of "general intelligence" which these companies are now pushing, the former sort of loses its use, cause the implication is that the latter is somehow autonomous or even sentient unlike the former, which is what we struggle to define in that original term of intelligence to begin with, so...

 

[Mathman]

Is the implication supposed to be that dragonflies are obviously not intelligent or something? Aren't pretty much all organisms intelligent? I feel like dragonflies are pretty high up on the hierarchy regarding complexity if we look at the orchard of life...

Thank you for inspiring me to check this out. Dragonfly brains have approximately 1 million neurons (human, 84 billion). Their biggest claim to fame is their remarkable ability to track motion efficiently to intercept prey, due to their well-evolved processing of visual signals. This process is carried out by a collection of only 16 individual neurons ("target-selective motion detectors"), which transmit instructions directly to the wings within 50 milliseconds.

Dragonfly brains are studied not only by AI specialists in general but also and in particular by developers of guidance systems for use in missile warfare.

Presumably dragonfly technology could not only measure under-rotations with great accuracy and confidence, but even anticipate the landing from the takeoff and intermediate air position and flash a UR in advance of the actual landing.

 

[Mathman]

I went looking and I'm sort of surprised there isn't a technical definition that's admittedly limited to LLMs, .. Unfortunately it seems even in the term AI, intelligence isn't well defined... It's just as colloquial as its normal usage.

I appreciate this post. Every technical field finds it necessary to co-opt terms from ordinary language, creating something of a communications disconnect between experts in the field and everyone else.

I will take your advice and stop quibbling about use of the catch-all term "intelligence."

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Thank you for inspiring me to check this out. Dragonfly brains have approximately 1 million neurons (human, 84 million). Their biggest claim to fame is their remarkable ability to track motion efficiently to intercept prey, due to their well-evolved processing of visual signals. This process is carried out by a collection of only 16 individual neurons ("target-selective motion detectors"), which transmit instructions directly to the wings within 50 milliseconds.

Dragonfly brains are studied not only by AI specialists in general but also and in particular by developers of guidance systems for use in missile warfare.

Presumably dragonfly technology could not only measure under-rotations with great accuracy and confidence, but even anticipate the landing from the takeoff and intermediate air position and flash a UR in advance of the actual landing.

A whole million neurons, that's quite a lot! Obviously less than our 10 to 100 Billion yet... A snail has less than twenty thousands neurons. My personal experience is that if you try to preserve your preferred plant from your pet snail's appetite, the snail may try to intimidate you by oscillating it's "torso", a bit like a walrus establishing dominance...

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So, there may be already quite a lot to do in terms of Figure Skating measuring, with not that much computer capacity!

 

[Mathematician]

I appreciate this post. Every technical field finds it necessary to co-opt terms from ordinary language, creating something of a communications disconnect between experts in the field and everyone else.

I will take your advice and stop quibbling about use of the catch-all term "intelligence."

Well actually my point was that while it is indeed usually the case that "they" co-opt an ordinary term and give it a new technical meaning, like Shannon's "information", that regrettably didn't happen with AI. It doesn't even seem like they have a particular definition for that term. They have just gotten by on it being a vague placeholder which people generally intuitively understand but haven't adequately philosophically parsed yet.