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ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

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Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#61

Post by unethical_ban »

abduhl wrote: post #26
reaperducer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sports is not just numbers. It isn't computers and digits and statistics. It's people and personalities and how they interact. There's a reason sports is called a reflection of "the human drama." Except for the Olympics, I don't watch or follow any sports. But I know enough to know that sports is about people. The only people who think it's nothing more than numbers are people with gambling addictions.

This is a really romantic view of sports, and a strong attack against the strawman argument that's been advanced by nobody ("sports is just numbers"). But to answer the OP's original question: no, she didn't do anything worth mentioning in the game per the newly updated ESPN article. Her team was dominated, losing by 3. "It was the final game in the nearly 14-year career of USWNT star Alex Morgan. The two-time World…

The commenter is suggesting that Alex Morgan didn't deserve to be mentioned at all, because of her supposed irrelevance in the single game.

The commenter, intentionally or not, is suggesting that nothing is relevant about any particular game except the statistics of the match and the outcome.

So yes, they were suggesting the game is only about numbers.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#62

Post by skipants »

mh- wrote: post #48
skipants wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think ESPN does anything that takes significant resources. That's all handled by SportsRadar or ... there's another big provider but their name alludes me. They basically firehose you all the game information as structured data and you can use it programmatically however you'd like.

I assume this is what lets baseball games show obscure factoids like "3rd in the NL West when facing left-handed pitchers on Tuesday"?

Definitely. I have no experience in live game statistics, but from my sports content experience I bet there's data scientists and applications behind the scenes that specifically pull this data to be read on-air.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#63

Post by nemo44x »

I've only heard of NWSL and this player, as I'm sure the vast majority of people that come across this story, because of this AI recap. I'm guessing without the AI doing it there wouldn't have been one in the first place due to the marginal magnitude of the event. So, in the end a net positive for the league?

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#64

Post by skipants »

soperj wrote: post #37
skipants wrote: post #10

It's pretty funny to me that this is used as a hit-piece against AI generated content. Here's an open-secret for everyone: web-based sports content companies have been automatically generating content articles for at least a decade; way before LLMs became popular. It is and was mostly done for search ranking. The more seemingly applicable content, the better your SEO. This situation has probably happened several time…

> ensuring that one of the copywriters manually updated this particular article. Clearly it was never "there" yet though previously, and obviously still isn't when this article is what's generated. You can tell that a lot of sports articles are essentially "fill in the blank", which is why they get the AP stories up right away, and then have their actual beat reporters come out with something later that night, or ear…

Pretty much. Though there were a lot of articles that are never touched, based on popularity.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#65

Post by fedeb95 »

skipants wrote: post #59
fedeb95 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the depression shouldn't arise from the generation, but from the consumption, for it is the latter that ultimately drives the former; that, in turn, can generate a reflection on what I myself consume.

I don't think people do actually consume it. In my experience this content was purely for SEO or maybe just a headline that people read quickly to keep up-to-date. The actual article content is rarely seen by a human.

that's a form of consumption

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#66

Post by skipants »

fedeb95 wrote: post #51
skipants wrote: post #10

It's pretty funny to me that this is used as a hit-piece against AI generated content. Here's an open-secret for everyone: web-based sports content companies have been automatically generating content articles for at least a decade; way before LLMs became popular. It is and was mostly done for search ranking. The more seemingly applicable content, the better your SEO. This situation has probably happened several time…

to me it doesn't appear particularly against or in favour of. Seemingly, LLMs don't avoid completely some of the mistakes that were already being made. Just as with any technology, the questions should be: by how much the two errors differ? Does the cost justify this margin?

Maybe hit-piece was a strong word; but I do think it's saying this happened _because_ of AI when to me it's been an issue for a long time. ESPN was always pretty egregious when it came to penny-pinching on content and ignoring less popular sports. Ask ice hockey fans how they feel about ESPN.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#67

Post by alt227 »

JAlexoid wrote: post #57
alt227 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here, I'll give you the paragraph from the article which talks about your point, since you must have have missed it: "You could certainly make the case that everything in the recap is accurate from a factual perspective. However, the fact that it doesn’t include any information about Morgan and how important this night was for her, the NWSL, and U.S. women’s soccer speaks to how these kinds of services can’t replicat…

Most game recaps that I've read are no less dry, than the AI generated one. The reviews that come after are typically the ones that cover broader impact. Reviews also include third party commentary and more insights from specialists. The benefit of having a factual recap generated minutes after the game far supersede the value added by a few words from a low paid recap writer hours after the game.

> The benefit of having a factual recap generated minutes after the game far supersede the value added by a few words from a low paid recap writer hours after the game.

I guess thats subjective and depends on what the individual finds interesting/important in sport. However including something potentially unecessary is far easier to do and covers more bases than leaving something potentially necessary out.

Re: ESPN AI recap of Alex Morgan’s final professional match fails to mention her

#69

Post by NavinF »

xyst wrote: post #42
admjs wrote: post #25

They could probably solve this by adding an audio transcript from the tv feed. Commentators share a lot of random facts and insights during games, and that would certainly enrich the AI summary.

Commentators are also often wrong, which would also be a disaster to repeat on print.

Interesting definition of "disaster" you got there. Articles like this are inconsequential as a whole
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