Until news broke regarding plans to have an artificial intelligence-powered judge at “ringside” for the heavyweight rematch between Oleksandr Usyk and Tyson Fury, I wasn’t sure which word to use to summarise boxing in 2024. However, thanks to Tuesday’s news, I suddenly had it. The word was this: artificial.
With each passing month it seems boxing is getting closer to full artificiality, the prospect of which represents utopia for some, though is wildly dystopian for others. To some, the inclusion of an “AI judge” on Saturday will no doubt be seen as a sign of progress and of the sport getting with the times. Yet, to others, it will mark the advent of a brave new world and the latest attempt to undo the stitching of a sport hundreds of years old.
Turki Alalshikh, the man behind the experiment, appears excited by its potential, so that’s cool. To announce the plan, he wrote on social media: “For the first time ever, an AI-powered judge will monitor the fight. Free from bias and human error brought to you by The Ring. This groundbreaking experiment, which won’t impact the official results, debuts during the biggest fight of the century, #Usyk2Fury, on December 21. Don’t miss history in the making.”
Selling a fight via a gimmick is nothing new, of course, especially in boxing, only there was something rather bleak about Alalshikh’s announcement post, not least because it contained reference to an AI-powered judge in the same breath as mention of The Ring. Though it is true Alalshikh now owns and has swiftly revived the magazine, and though it is great to see it back in print, it is no less peculiar to imagine the marrying of a boxing institution founded in 1922 with something utilised in 2024 to move things further away from human control and influence.
The good news is that Alalshikh’s experiment is, for now, just a bit of fun, and will have no bearing on the result of Saturday’s fight. His AI-powered judge will simply be programmed to score all 12 rounds of Usyk vs Fury and will, in essence, be treated as a test; an attempt to monitor how accurately a non-human device can score a boxing match.
If it is left there, that is fine; let Alalshikh have his fun. Yet one can’t help but wonder how much of the appeal of hypothetically discarding human judges would have to do with accuracy and how much of it would have to do with an even greater desire for control. After all, while some judges are open to being influenced by other human beings, there remain anomalies whose opinion – and yes, scorecard – is often at odds with what promoters either saw or wanted to see on fight night. And in the pursuit of control, nothing irks those in power quite like human beings and all their inconvenient imperfections and thoughts.
“I’m here to bring fairness to the ring,” said boxing’s first AI-powered judge. “I analyse every round, every move, and every decisive moment during the fight, displaying real-time metrics like aggression, landed punches, impact, and defensive deployments. With this data, I’m able to calculate a score and determine who should win the match.”
This time last year my final column of 2023 was also an experiment of sorts. For that column I elected to use ChatGPT to help analyse the year in boxing and found within its responses to my questions very few errors but a banality you should, when writing, look to avoid.
The aim of that piece, more than to poke fun at ChatGPT’s limitations, was to highlight how easy it would be in the future for members of the boxing media to fill pages, whether of a magazine or a website, and satisfy the demands of bosses and promoters alike. Twelve months on, we now have plenty more evidence of this. In that time, we have seen news become quicker and less concerned with quality. We have seen all the same outlets produce all the same stuff, whether in the form of videos or articles, and we have even seen a blending, with writers having to do more video stuff to satiate the demand for simplicity and speed and YouTubers trying their hand at writing just to produce regular “content” on days when there is nobody to pester.
It is easy now, you see. With the bar so low, it doesn’t take much to advance from a text to a tweet to an email to an article. It is, after all, just words. All you have to do is write one, then follow it with another, and then another and another until you run out of words and put a full stop at the end of the sentence. After that you hit “post”. There’s your content. Here’s your press pass.
For the sport’s promoters, the easier things get, the better. That goes for their own jobs – made easier by virtue of Alalshikh and Saudi Arabia – and also those of the people who turn up to cover their events and tell the world what is happening in exultant tones. It is, these days, a kind of “access journalism” we see during the big events, and for this brand of journalism to thrive requires good relationships and good behaviour. Without it, there is no access and therefore no journalism, and the only ones who can grant access, and enable journalism, are the promoters and the financiers of these events. This means that if the events are not covered to the promoter’s or financier’s satisfaction, the journalist in question, whether writing or filming, could feasibly find their access denied.
That is an organiser’s prerogative and they are free to wield this power as liberally as they see fit. Yet too much wielding, and too much resistance to objectivity, leads us to artificiality and the feeling of cosplaying a boxing event rather than actually witnessing or being involved in one. On occasion, in fact, you find yourself watching a broadcast from Riyadh and all you can imagine is the fun the creators of a show like South Park would have if only boxing was a more popular and serious sport. At their disposal, right there on screen, are all the characters and catchphrases and the rest quite naturally writes itself.
Then, of course, the fights happen and we are immediately reminded of what drew us to boxing in the first place: two boxers, one referee, one ring. Now all of a sudden there is no sniff of artificiality or parody. Now what we see is real and meaningful and true. Now gratitude is shown in our eyes and our concentration. They were right all along: it is indeed excellent.
This will again be the case on Saturday night when Usyk and Fury renew acquaintances and give fans the heavyweight fight they want to see. Afterwards, they will then both thank His Excellency and The Kingdom for making it happen, and we will find out what an AI-powered judge thought of the fight – just because we can. It will be strange, yes, but, for as long as it beats, we shouldn’t let the artificiality of proceedings detract from the heart of it all. That still pumps. That is still bigger than the heart of any other sport.
Besides, when has boxing ever been anything other than morally ambiguous and tough to love? Part of its charm lies in its complexity and always has done. At times we fall head over heels in love with it, whereas at other times we have our head in our hands, repelled by the toxicity, adamant it has had its last chance.
This year, a year of change, has had us feeling like the conflicted wife of a millionaire surgeon. Each morning you look in the mirror and tell yourself that your face has never looked better, yet you recognise too that it is not the face with which you were born, nor is the smile upon it sincere; natural. You also accept that once the first incision was made, and the first needle or chunk of silicon was inserted, there was no going back; that once committed, the work could never be undone.
Then you look around at your surroundings – beautiful house, large kitchen, designer clothes in the closet – and you offset this decadence with the silence, as well as the fact your husband spends more time away from you than he does with you and does, as part of the deal, habitually cheat. Added to that, your kids have grown disenchanted with your inadequate parenting and are both now in therapy, which at least you can afford. Your friends, meanwhile, each of them built the same way, remind you: “It has always been like this. Stop moaning and embrace it. You’ll get worry lines otherwise.”
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