TacticAI, are the tactical options offered by this artificial intelligence superior to those of coaches?

Researchers have developed artificial intelligence to optimize the positioning of players during corners. Liverpool FC collaborates with three people with Google based on the Tactic AI model


Publish on 04/11/2024 11:52

It’s a day on 04/11/2024 12:05

Class time: 2 min

Liverpool FC is collaborating with Google on TacticAI, an artificial intelligence that optimizes the position of players in corners. Illustrative photo. (JÜRGEN FROMME / FIRO SPORTPHOTO / MAXPPP)

The AI ​​informs you by watching Liverpool matches! Remember the UEFA Champions League semi-final in 2019. Trent Alexander-Arnold passed to Divock Origi on a corner, a corner kick, resulting in what became the greatest goal of Liverpool. Was it luck, intuition, technique or a computer calculation?

Liverpool FC are working with three people using Google on the AI-powered TacticAI model, developed by the DeepMind team, a branch of Google specializing in artificial intelligence (AI)-based research. They are also behind AlphaFold, an AI capable of predicting protein structure, a tool that could revolutionize biomedical research by accelerating the drug discovery process. TacticAI is designed to optimize players’ position during turns. Human experts checked the AI’s performance and found that in 90% of cases, the tactical options offered by TacticAI outperformed the cells of human trainers.

The new DeepMind TacticAI project is the result of three years of collaboration with Liverpool (Site notre blog d’information) Club, a legendary team in the English Premier League. The object is the integrated intelligence of artificial intelligence into the strategies of (Site notre bureau spécialisé)ers, offering a message to human coaches. For this reason, the AI ​​model analyzes 7,176 Premier League corners between 2020 and 2023 and uses an in-depth geometric approach. Knowing that corners represent 30% of goals in this championship, researchers naturally sought the best way to hit the ball to score.

Sport and games: a research model approved by AI specialists

This initiative is not a first for the DeepMind team. Behind every game there is a strategy. DeepMind has already developed the AI ​​capabilities to surpass it and imports it from Go, chess or Shogi, a Japanese chess game, with AlphaGo and AlphaZero. In 2022, before the introduction of (Site notre bureau spécialisé) robots, the team launched a Graph Imputer, and another AI was successfully released into players’ movements on the field. The DeepMind TacticAI project is radically transforming approaches to training and tactics in (Site notre bureau spécialisé).