Speedgate: World’s First Sport Generated by AI

Per the embedded video (also used on the official site), they used textgenrnn (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;minimaxir&#x2F;textgenrnn" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;minimaxir&#x2F;textgenrnn</a>) to train the text-generating AI, which I made. Although I really wish they said that explicitly: not as a means of attribution, but to make the text generation more accessible&#x2F;transparent which is why I made textgenrnn in the first place.<p>GPT-2 would likely have much more <i>interesting</i> results on such longer input text. If anyone from AKQA reads this, I&#x27;m open to help setting that up.

Looks like they&#x27;re using Keras to generate random phrases, then winnowing them down to the best few, which they extrapolate into a functional sport rulebook with their human brains.<p>Could have probably done this with a Markov chain as well. &quot;apt-get install dadadodo&quot; for instance.

Looking over the rules, it looks like there&#x27;s an assumed &quot;causal&quot;-ness to the game (not good, not bad, just noting there&#x27;s an assumption that everyone will play by the rules at all times). Based on the rules [1], there doesn&#x27;t seem to be any consequence to fouling if you do not have the ball. What stops a non-carrying team player from stepping in the center or tackling a player?<p>Given the current ruleset, nothing. Three fouls give you a demerit, three demerits give you a reprimand, 3 reprimands ... to infinity. Secondly, is there a difference in severity to stepping in the center vs. tackling?<p>I get that you could say that 2 fouls is a timeout, and certain rules carry higher penalties (1 for center stepping, 2 for tackling), but it is not written.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playspeedgate.org&#x2F;8&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playspeedgate.org&#x2F;8&#x2F;</a>

What I don&#x27;t get is: How much of this was created by AI, and how much is human intervention?<p>How does the AI judge what is a good game versus a bad game?

Sounds like Calvin ball <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gocomics.com&#x2F;calvinandhobbes&#x2F;1990&#x2F;05&#x2F;05" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gocomics.com&#x2F;calvinandhobbes&#x2F;1990&#x2F;05&#x2F;05</a>

Perhaps a better use of AI would be to flesh out a comprehensive rulebook for playing 43-man Squamish. <i>Someone</i> needs to figure out what the Probate Judge &amp; Baggage Smasher are supposed to do if it rains...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.madcoversite.com&#x2F;quiz_olympics.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.madcoversite.com&#x2F;quiz_olympics.html</a>

I&#x27;m not entirely sure what the restrictions on the defenders are (other than having to return to their half after their team scores), but there&#x27;s an exploit I can see already:<p>&gt; Only 1 defender is allowed in the end-gate circle at any time.<p>This says &quot;defender&quot;, which is a role. So forwards would be allowed to bolster the gate&#x27;s defense, which might make sense given the possession mechanic.<p>The lack of tackling and rules about passing direction, with body blocking allowed, means that huddling a few players together and creeping up might be a viable strategy that the defending team can&#x27;t really counter. It would be a valid strategy in Rugby too (where you&#x27;re only allowed to tackle the ball carrier), were it not for rules against obstructing tacklers.<p>This kind of turtling strategy seems contrary to the nature of the game, so if effective it would need nerfing&#x2F;banning.

Looks like a game where you get kicked in the face a lot.

The rules [0] are presented pretty nicely. This looks like a lot of fun for twelve players.<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playspeedgate.org&#x2F;5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playspeedgate.org&#x2F;5&#x2F;</a>

What I couldn&#x27;t quite grasp from the rules is how the center-gate works. Do you have to pass or kick the ball through the center gate to get to the other side or are you allowed to go around the center gate? Also, does the ball have to be kicked through the end gates on the ground or can you punt it right over? Seems like it might be hard to judge whether a goal was made since you can come at it from so many angles, if you&#x27;re allowed to kick as high as you want.<p>Reminds me more of Aussie Rules Football than Rugby, to be honest, but sans tackling.

Here&#x27;s the sports official site: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playspeedgate.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;playspeedgate.org&#x2F;</a>

&gt; or an exploding Frisbee game<p>I&#x27;m intrigued.

They picked rules from almost all kinds of sports in the world but did they have that kind of diversity in the &#x27;human fine tuning&#x27; piece of it? Otherwise I guess the end result is going to be bit biased.

&gt; trained a recurrent neural network and a deep convolutional generative adversarial network on over 400 sports with the aim of creating a new and original sport.<p>Did they share anywhere what their training data looked like?

Looks a lot like Australian Rules Football (AFL) without the tackling.

So a &quot;the ocho&quot; generator. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;theocho&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;theocho&#x2F;</a>

Yet another &quot;look what we did with AI&quot; hype piece where all they did was hand pick some output and mash it together to make something intelligible. Silly nonsense.

Would have been more interesting if they’d also used an AI to play each game and see how that turns out. Does the game have a simple always-win strategy? If so that games is gonna be pretty dull to play and watch.

there seems to be no analysis on why the size and dimension of the ball is chosen - very few games have balls that are not spherical.. seems too much human intervention in generating the Sport

This doesn&#x27;t seem particularly viable as a &#x27;sport&#x27;, i.e. an athletic competition, but maybe fun as a group activity. e.g. You have 3 defenders that seem to be allowed to camp without restriction a 6&#x27; tall, 10&#x27; wide &#x27;goal&#x27;. Put 3 athletes on this duty and no one will ever score.

Does the extra goal make it a total of 3 or 5 points for the possession?

I always thought Quidditch sounded like it had been developed by an AI.

Is the background music in the video also AI generated?

Seems like they invented Gaelic Football

Well that promo video was utterly uninformative. How do you play; is it fun?

Basically just rugby with some nets and goalies.

It is some kind of rugby...

What would the equivalent of the Cloud to Butt extension for &quot;AI&quot; be? I get annoyed every time I see this word now and I&#x27;d like to alleviate that.

Are you sure this wasn&#x27;t created by Homer Simpson?

I am interested if you start selling onions or tomatoes on the internet. &#x2F;s