© Steven Bisig/Imagn
Sooner or later, whether we like it or not, the robots are coming for us all. Some of us are fighting the good fight, pushing back against humanity’s self-created demise.
Others, however, are leaning in and missing the forest for the trees as they try to create ways to make their lives easier. Laura Harvey, the manager of the NWSL‘s Seattle Reign, falls under the latter category.
During a recent appearance on the Soccerish podcast, Harvey revealed that she’s been using ChatGPT to help figure out her tactical setup.
Laura Harvey Is Letting A Robot Do Her Job!
“I was like: ‘I wonder if ChatGPT could give you information about football, and it would be beneficial?’” Harvey told the hosts.
“One day in the offseason, I was writing things into ChatGPT like, ‘What is Seattle Reign’s identity?’ And it would spurt it out. And I was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s true or not’.
“…Then like, ‘what do you need to do to be successful in the NWSL?’ Like, really broad questions.
“And then I put in, ‘What formation should you play to beat NWSL teams?’ And it spurted out every team in the league and what formation you should play … For two teams — I’m not going to say who they are because they’ll know — it went, ‘You should play a back five.’ So I did. No joke, that’s why I did it.
“It was early in the season and I said to the coaching staff, I’m not joking, this is what I did. And they were like, ‘huh, interesting’.”
Now, the use of research and analytics in coaching is an asset and should not be frowned upon. Plus, Seattle currently sits fourth in the NWSL table (albeit 24 points behind leader Kansas City). So it’s not the worst thought process in the world.
But herein lies the issue. What exactly does Harvey do for Seattle, then? If a simple quick AI answer can do your job, what should the club even employ you?
Harvey did explain that it wasn’t just as simple as switching formations at the suggestion of ChatGPT.
“We researched it, we did a deep dive on it, we thought about how we could play it,” she ADDED. “And we went for it, and we liked it. It worked. We won the game.
“It didn’t tell you how to play it or what to do in it or any of that stuff. It was just like ‘this is what we would say to do’. And I was like, ‘alright’. And that was what spurred me to look into it. So then I really looked into it.
“We’ve come in and out of it (the back five). Now we’re quite fluid, we can float in and out of it within games. And I love that.
But is this really what we want from sports? From coaches? To just use machine learning to dictate the way teams play. In the end, sports are entertainment. Management and coaching are a battle of wits. If it all just comes down to machines, what fun is that anymore?