The World is not over yet, but the World-We-Have-Known is definitely over.
"The world is still going its business as usual, but the world we know is definitely coming to an end."
This is something I've heard a lot lately, and it's the most direct attitude and response to artificial intelligence, including the current ChatGPT craze. According to SimilarWeb, a web traffic data website, OpenAI's ChatGPT reached a new high of 1.76 billion visits in April, surpassing other international search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo, reaching 2% of Google and 60% of Baidu.
In fact, artificial intelligence is already changing people's perceptions and lifestyles at a fundamental level. For example, the traditional homework model in schools has become a thing of the past, ChatGPT has the ability to complete the work of students in all subjects and grades, and students have quickly caught up - in January 2023, online course provider Study.com surveyed 1,000 students over the age of 18 worldwide showed that more than 89% of students surveyed would use ChatGPT for homework; In addition, the concept of "plagiarism" seems to be dying out – ChatGPT produces content that is difficult to define whether it is plagiarized or not, and some people even prefer this style.
The list goes on.
We now have an understanding of how ChatGPT understands and generates human-like text, which can perform tasks such as answering questions, writing creative stories, and more. Similar to other AI applications, ChatGPT is generated by extracting large amounts of text data from the Internet and then training it, so it has a broader understanding of natural language processing and can react to almost any topic. According to Business 2 Community data, GPT-3 has 175 billion training parameters, and GPT-4 has reached a trillion scale.
ChatGPT takes the shortest time to refresh a million user subscriptions
So, what impact will this shocking achievement have on the sports industry? And how will it guide the future direction of sports?
Potential application directions
In fact, in many ways, ChatGPT can revolutionize traditional sports and its services, especially around sports events and commerce.
ChatGPT can be used to create virtual customer service agents, such as ChatGPT Sports Chat – AI can respond to fans' common questions, such as match times, ticket availability, and where to buy merchandise on offerings. Eliminating manual customer service saves organizers time and resources while providing fans with fast and accurate information.
Nowadays, Internet social media is different from traditional media, and the demand for content is often more urgent, which poses challenges for sports content creators. They must remain highly professional and provide multi-formatted, differentiated content for different social channels. Of course, creators must ensure that content is independent and uploaded in a timely manner. With the help of ChatGPT, sports content practitioners will greatly alleviate the above problems. ChatGPT has been used in Twitter earlier, and practitioners have trained AI on historical text sets to automatically generate new historical tweets with similar tone and style.
Real-time event coverage is crucial in the course of the match, and AI technology that automatically generates match replays and summaries is naturally valuable. ChatGPT can indeed train based on event-related datasets and update them in real time, providing fans with the latest sports information and industry insights. In addition, ChatGPT can also complete real-time translation and transcription, helping relay copyright providers to cover nearly unlimited geographical audiences and locales, and maximize copyright development.
ChatGPT and the sports betting industry
From a sports betting perspective, the problem with using ChatGPT is obvious: is it possible to use ChatGPT effectively for sports betting, or to put it bluntly – can it make money? I guess that remains to be seen.
On May 14, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), a federal law prohibiting sports betting, enacted in 1992. Five years later, 34 states, including Washington, D.C., have legalized sports betting in a specific form, and the U.S. sports betting market has expanded dramatically.
According to the American Gaming Association (AGA), since 2018, legal sports betting in the United States has totaled $220 billion, which has brought more than $3 billion in legal tax revenue to states. With the widespread popularity of tools such as ChatGPT, it will also bring a new impact to the sports betting industry. (Read more: 5th anniversary of legalizing sports betting, $220 billion cake | Bear Vision)
With the ability of tools such as ChatGPT to respond instantly, users can receive analysis and insights about events in the first place, which will be one of the biggest advantages of ChatGPT for sports betting. By scanning a large amount of event data and statistics, ChatGPT can identify the overall trends and patterns of related matches, and can detect the underlying patterns behind the cold numbers more than humans. In addition, it provides users with up-to-date sports information, injury and other factors that could affect the outcome of a game.
Another benefit of using ChatGPT for sports betting is that it provides personalized recommendations based on the betting strategies and preferences of actual users. Many may think that ChatGPT will struggle to work effectively when humans use intuition or make irrational decisions. In fact, AI has not evolved to this point, but if bettors tend or habitually bet on weak teams, ChatGPT certainly has the ability to recommend teams with more "upset potential".
Although the use of AI tools in the above content is commended, most of the practical application scenarios have long been widely known. At this stage, ChatGPT has not yet seen the emergence of disruptive content at the sports level.
What surprised me was that ChatGPT has done a lot in maintaining customer privacy and anonymity, which will undoubtedly make users more trusting and willing to use AI tools. Unlike traditional betting sites, ChatGPT does not require users to provide personal information or payment details, which will be fatally attractive to online users who are reluctant to share personal information.
It remains to be seen how ChatGPT will impact the sports betting industry. It should be noted that one of the biggest limitations of ChatGPT is that its analysis is based on the data obtained. If the data is incomplete, unreliable, or error-prone, the analysis results are meaningless. In addition, most users will immediately realize that ChatGPT's conclusions are generated based on algorithms and machine learning models, while factors such as team dynamics, real-time team situations, game tactics or player psychological changes, new players, coaches, etc. are rarely included in the analysis – these intangible factors in sports are difficult to quantify and analyze.
Overall, ChatGPT, as a tool for sports betting, is a powerful addition to the "arsenal" of legitimate gambling for individuals. AI data analysis and the ability to provide personalized recommendations will help users make sound decisions and improve their chances of winning. For now, however, it is still difficult for bettors to overcome the opportunity to bet based on personal judgment or intuition, which they believe has a higher probability of winning.
The ethical issues raised are worth paying attention to
Given the above known and unknown potential, ChatGPT has naturally sparked a series of controversies over ethical issues. As AI technology continues to mature, it may also face the "Collingridge dilemma" in the near future, where the social consequences of a technology are not foreseen at an early stage, and when the consequences are unbearable, the technology itself becomes part of the economic and social fabric and it becomes increasingly difficult to control it.
The ethical issue involved in sports analysis and reporting is that the use of personal data of players and teams may be considered an invasion of privacy, and there are concerns about the use of this data and the permission of the data user.
A related issue is that ChatGPT's underlying bias leads to unfair or inaccurate predictions, and that outdated models and biased ideas from the sports industry can also lead to analytical imbalances. The pursuit of fairness and integrity of content will raise concerns about the use of AI technology by groups and individuals.
In this way, we have to carefully consider the quote at the beginning of this article. As artificial intelligence infiltrates all areas of life, the future may never be as uncertain and uncertain as it is at the moment, and it is clear that sports cannot escape the upheaval. In the coming period, the consumption and participation of sports and how mass sports will continue to move forward are still unknown, and we as sports practitioners can only wait and see.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article only represent the author's own views and do not represent Lazy Bear Sports.