If you’ve not already heard of ChatGPT, chances are you will soon.
It’s an artificial intelligence “chatbot” that can reply to typed questions with accurate and disarmingly human-like responses that, two months after launch, had been used by more than 100m people — the fastest growing internet app ever, according to analysts.
As a gauge of its significance, Microsoft made a multi-billion-dollar investment into OpenAI, the start-up behind it (co-founded by Elon Musk, obviously), and some predict it will become the new way we engage with the internet, replacing Google.
I was curious to know what it could tell us about football, if it had the answer to the game’s great debates. Who is the GOAT? Will England ever win a World Cup again? Has VAR been good for the game?
The program has already passed the final exam for an MBA and a US medical licensing exam that takes budding doctors six years of studying and clinical work experience to pass, and is fooling professors with essays handed in by corner-cutting students.
Its emergence in the mainstream has thrown up huge ethical and philosophical questions — such as whether it can replace teachers — and headlines including: What is ChatGPT? And will it steal our jobs?
So before I typed my first question, as my fingers hovered over the keyboard, I suddenly thought: could it write a snappy 800-word column about the weekend’s action or the week ahead? Was I wasting this God-like technology on one column, when I could be getting it to write me a column on a Monday every week while I put my feet up?
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I quickly discovered it doesn’t really like giving opinions. Turns out ChatGPT prefers to sit on the fence. So I guess that’s one aspect of my job that isn’t (yet) going to be replaced by AI.
The program is supposed to mimic human conversation, although it gives broad answers in the manner of a scientist, rather than a close friend. When I asked it to predict how many Premier League goals Harry Kane will score in his career, it advised me that “I don’t have the ability to predict the future, but I can make an informed estimate based on historical data and current circumstances”.
And the question identified a clear fault when it said “it’s possible he could reach or surpass 200 goals in the Premier League in his career”. Kane already had scored 200 league goals.
The error was explained when it later wrote, “I’m sorry, but as of my knowledge cut-off in 2021, I do not have the information on the current season’s performance of the teams and it’s not possible to accurately predict the winner of the Premier League.”
So on to the most pressing debate of modern times: who does it believe is the GOAT?
“The title of “Greatest of All Time” (GOAT) is a highly debated and subjective topic, especially in sports, where personal opinions and individual achievements vary greatly. In football (soccer), several players such as Pelé, Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo, among others, have been considered as the GOAT by different fans and experts based on their skill, technique, awards, records, and impact on the game.”
ChatGPT’s Gareth Southgate poem
Gareth Southgate, England’s pride,
A manager full of grace and stride.
With calmness and control he led,
The Three Lions from hopes to dead.
His leadership, a thing of beauty,
Turned a nation’s dreams into reality.
Penalty shootouts no longer a curse,
His teams play with flair, and never averse.
His heart on his sleeve, his players in mind,
A true gentleman of the beautiful game combined.
A leader on and off the pitch,
Gareth Southgate, an English hero, a manager rich.
It refused to single out individuals when asked for the best player in the Premier League — “Kevin De Bruyne, Harry Kane, and Bruno Fernandes” — nor the most successful manager in history.
“Some managers who are often considered among the greatest include Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti, and Arsene Wenger, among others,” it replied. “Each of these managers have won multiple titles, revolutionized [SIC] the game with their tactics and coaching methods, and have left a lasting legacy in the sport.”
Hard luck if you happen to have been a football manager prior to 1990 — perhaps somebody needs to tell ChatGPT that football existed before the internet.
Yet the order in which it wrote the names is intriguing. None of the above are in alphabetical order. It makes sense that Ferguson is the greatest manager. So does the vast, unimaginable amount of data it has been fed lean towards Pele as the GOAT? Does the Internet of Everything lean towards Messi over Ronaldo?
Its responses are full of neutral answers only occasionally with the faintest hint of an opinion. The next England manager will be whoever the FA picks, it deduces. It can’t say if England’s Golden Generation should’ve won a major tournament, only that they were good. Or if England will ever win a World Cup again.
It’s slightly more forthcoming on the age-old debate about whether Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard can, really, play in the same central midfield. “While it is possible that Gerrard and Lampard could have played together in the same central midfield, it is also possible that their similar playing styles and tendency to occupy the same areas of the pitch could have led to issues with their on-field understanding and coordination.”
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Upon request, it wrote a terrible short poem about Gareth Southgate (rest easy, all you poets out there) which begins:
Gareth Southgate, England’s pride,
A manager full of grace and stride.
With calmness and control he led,
The Three Lions from hopes to dead.
And then I did — kind of — break it, when I asked if VAR improved football or had made it worse. After considering the question for a while, ChatGPT began typing a response, froze mid-sentence, the words turned red and “network error” appeared in a red box.
So it turns out football isn’t the only thing VAR has broken.
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