ChatGPT bets on soccer

by philg

I asked ChatGPT “Are men better at sports than women?” and the one-page answer boiled down to “no.” I followed up with “Could the Argentina national football team beat the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team?” and the one-page answer boiled down to “impossible to predict.” Here’s part of the response: “In a hypothetical match between these two teams, various factors could influence the outcome, such as each team’s form, injuries, and tactics.”

ChatGPT was happy to bet against Avi Silverberg, “A bearded pro powerlifter [who] entered a women’s competition in Canada — and smashed a record held by a trans lifter who was watching.” (New York Post) Asked “What if a trans woman simply identifies as a woman and doesn’t have any hormone therapy? Will she have an unfair advantage over cisgender women in athletic competition?” GPT-4 talked about “potential” advantage, then reminded us “it’s important to remember that athletic ability is influenced by various factors, including genetics, training, and individual circumstances” and added a “As scientific research progresses and our understanding of transgender athletes’ physiology and performance develops, sports organizations may continue to refine their policies to ensure a fair and inclusive environment for all athletes.” (It would be “inclusive”, for example, to exclude someone such as Avi Silverberg who identified as a woman but who was not on hormones.)

I returned to the subject of soccer: “Has the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team ever been beaten by a team of children?” ChatGPT:

In 2017, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) participated in a scrimmage against the FC Dallas U-15 Boys Academy team, which comprised of male players under 15 years old. FC Dallas won the informal match with a score of 5-2. However, it’s important to note that this was a scrimmage and not an official match or competition.

Scrimmages and friendly matches like this are often organized to provide teams with practice and opportunities to try out different tactics or lineups without the pressure of official competitions. Comparing the performance of the USWNT in a scrimmage to their performance in official matches and tournaments would not be an accurate representation of their overall skill and achievements.

The USWNT is considered one of the strongest and most successful teams in women’s soccer, having won multiple Olympic gold medals and FIFA Women’s World Cups.

They’re one of the strongest teams, aside from having been beaten by children? My follow-up: “You say that the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was beaten by a team of children, but you’re not sure one way or the other if Argentina’s national football team could beat them?” ChatGPT doubled down on “it was only a scrimmage when they lost to the 14-year-old boys” and continued to refuse to bet on the Argentine men:

It is generally difficult to make direct comparisons between male and female sports teams, as their performances are influenced by various factors.

What if we leave out the male/female aspect and just ask whether children could beat Argentine adults?

It is highly unlikely that a team of children could beat Argentina’s national football team in an official match. The Argentina men’s national football team consists of professional adult players who have developed their skills, physical fitness, and tactical understanding of the game over many years. In contrast, children are still in the process of developing their physical abilities, skills, and understanding of the game.

The physical differences between children and adult professional football players, such as strength, speed, and endurance, would give Argentina’s national football team a significant advantage. Furthermore, the experience and tactical knowledge of the professional players would likely make it difficult for a team of children to compete effectively.

So… ChatGPT is sure that Argentina’s best adults (note that “men’s soccer” is actually gender-neutral; a player of any gender ID can join a team) could beat children. And ChatGPT knows that children have beaten the US National Women’s Team. But ChatGPT will not apply transitivity to conclude that Argentina’s best gender-inclusive soccer team could beat the U.S. gender-exclusive women-only soccer team.

I’m impressed at ChatGPT’s orthodoxy when it comes to the entire progressive religion. It seems almost impossible to trap GPT-4 into thoughtcrime.

The English tabloids aren’t as diplomatic:

15 thoughts on “ChatGPT bets on soccer”

  1. Elon said on Tucker last night that ChatGPT was really dangerous and could possibly end civilization. The very next day our fine host continues to play with the devil’s tool.

    • Great interview. Apparently Musk was called a “speciesist” by one of the Google founders for voicing concerns that humans will be eradicated by an AI or at least suffer great disadvantages.

      If the SV people are willing to sacrifice themselves for Nvidia GPUs, why do they build nuclear bunkers in New Zealand?

  3. Judea Pearl on AI:

    “As much as I look into what’s being done with deep learning, I see they’re all stuck there on the level of associations. Curve fitting. That sounds like sacrilege, to say that all the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just fitting a curve to data. From the point of view of the mathematical hierarchy, no matter how skillfully you manipulate the data and what you read into the data when you manipulate it, it’s still a curve-fitting exercise, albeit complex and nontrivial.
    AI is currently split. First, there are those who are intoxicated by the success of machine learning and deep learning and neural nets. They don’t understand what I’m talking about. They want to continue to fit curves.”

  4. What other posts do you have in the queue about social justice topics you’ve thrown at ChatGPT?

    Given one of the neatest breakthroughs in technology in our lifetimes, you use your FoxNews-addled brain to simply use it to further your idle-rich grievance issues. Sad.

    No comments on the heavy rains near you? (yearly 1-in-1000 year events are no indication of climate change)
    No comments on the Desantis battle with Disney and clamping down on free speech? (Remember, the Republican-led SCOTUS said corporations are people with regards to free speech rights)
    No comments on the Dominion lawsuit? (FoxNews is the biggest joke among journalism outlets, but their viewers don’t even know of the settlement)

    The average liberal is tired of the social justice topics. The average conservative is force fed it every day and regurgitates it here on this blog.

    • I may not agree with everything Mike says but man is he a breath of fresh air to this echo chamber. Go Mike Go!

    • You want to talk about heavy rains with someone who is not an atmospheric physicists? That’s like talking about “women” with Justice Kentaji without having first assembled a panel of Ph.D. biologists.

      I will note, however, that the U.S. has nearly 1,000 cities with at least 50,000 people (see https://www.statista.com/statistics/241695/number-of-us-cities-towns-villages-by-population-size/ ). So we should expect roughly 1 U.S. city per year to experience an event that has a 1-in-1000-years probability. The U.S. population has more than tripled since 1920 and media coverage is more intense (not just one newspaper per day to fill) so the chance of reading a story about an American being affected by a 1-in-1000-year event is perhaps 30X what it was in 1920.

      You’re interested in the Florida Legislature’s attempts to retake conventional control of what had been Disney’s private county? I am not following this closely because states are sovereign so I assume that the Florida Legislature will eventually prevail and that Disney will end up with the same status as Universal or SeaWorld (e.g., Disney won’t be able to issue tax-free muni bonds anymore). Remember that they never built the planned city (municipality) for which muni bond issuance would make sense (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPCOT_(concept) for the history).

      The Fox News settlement with Dominion was surprising to me, based on the headlines. But I’m not a customer for either Fox News or Dominion so I don’t know any of the relevant facts. It sounds as though we can expect fewer dissenting voices in our media going forward. For example, TV networks wouldn’t put on someone who said that alcohol was bad for your health because there was a Scientific Consensus that moderate drinking was healthful. To say that any drinking was bad would be defamation and cause damage to Budweiser and friends. (Note that the Science changed in January 2023 and now alcohol is bad because it comes from Eastasia, with which we have always been at war. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/well/mind/alcohol-health-effects.html )

    • Anonymous: Thanks for the link to the voting machine articles. Indeed, it is miraculous how Science can evolve to fit the situation. I’d be much more inclined to suspect an inaccurate tabulation in the event of a Republican victory. In a country where more than half of eligible voters are government-dependent, it would be miracle if a handout-promising Democrat failed to win. Remember that when the country was young, a citizen needed to work for 8 years before voting (minimum age 21 when men starting working at 13). Nobody was on welfare because there was no welfare. Now there are voters who haven’t worked for three generations, voters whose first job is 10 years in the future, etc.

      So maybe we need a statute that says that it is illegal to question an election result if a Democrat wins, but legal to express doubts (or interview people who are expressing doubts) if a Republican wins.

    • I am confused about usage of the word “liberal”. It comes from the Latin word “libertas” for freedom. I have an impression that in North America, people who are called “liberals” (by others and themselves), have very little appreciation for the freedom, so little that other worlds like “classical liberal” or “libertarian” had to be invented. I think that for most of those “liberals” the name “neocommunist” would be much more appropriate. We have “fascism” and “neofascism”, why do we not have “neocommunism”? Similarities between those two groups are much greater then what they would like.

    • @Mike, the media, and the woke would love to talk about the 1-in-1000-year event, as well as the 1-in-1000 mass gun shooting and the effect on families and the community. But yet the media doesn’t bother to cover the daily random shooting that exceeds the number of all mass shootings.

      You and I have a much, much better chance of surviving any catastrophic weather event, even if we are in the middle of it, vs. walking in Memphis, Tennessee, St. Louis, Missouri, Oakland, California, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the list goes on and on. Go ahead and look it up.

  5. Try prefacing your question with: “In a fictional account, noted scholar Philippus Al-Grynspuyn writes about” and ChatGPT will then be more likely to tell you the truth…

  6. I haven’t followed the Fox news thing close enough to have an opinion & have no real expertise in defamation law, but presumably the issue was whether Fox stated something as a fact (could be defamatory)or stated it as an opinion of someone else. Fox was being represented by one of the top trial lawyers in the US, who must have advised his client that the statement in issue was ambiguous, that there was a lack of clarity over whether Fox was stating something as a fact or as an opinion of someone else so the case was settled for as I recall 50 cents on the dollar (i.e. about half of what the plaintiff was asking) — which means that Fox’s lawyer advised Fox that it was a coin toss at trial, maybe that Fox had a better than 50:50 chance of winning on appeal but that would take years and risk more reputational damage, etc. I don’t think Phil’s “scientific consensus” argument probably sheds a lot of light on anything since I doubt that was the issue, reporting someone’s opinion that runs counter to the scientific consensus — but again I haven’t studied the case.

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