JSS supporters additionally hope AI in gymnastics can have the ability to eradicate the inevitable biases that people deliver to the judging sales space. Because it presently stands, judging shouldn’t be notably clear; coaches and gymnasts agree it’s tough to inform what goes on behind the scenes in scoring or inquiries.
That is additional sophisticated by the truth that components like nationality and physique kind can add a acutely aware or unconscious bias that influences scores. On the 2023 World Championships, for example, gymnast Kaia Tanskanen knew that as a member of the Finnish staff, she was at an obstacle—what followers name a “leotard bias.” Whereas judges might deny it, followers typically understand “built-in deductions” for international locations that don’t have probably the most aggressive and elite packages—international locations, in different phrases, that aren’t the US or Russia.
ZHENG HUANSONG/XINHUA/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
That’s one motive Kaia (whose coach is Kim Tanskanen, her mom) is hopeful about how JSS may change competitors: “I really feel just like the scoring can be extra even,” she says.
“Particularly the smaller international locations that compete internationally—I believe the judges simply have this assumption of what’s going to occur earlier than they even begin the routine, they usually type of choose based mostly off that,” says Emma Spence, an elite Canadian gymnast who competed on the 2022 World Championships. “If we will eradicate that, I believe it can make it somewhat extra of a good likelihood for everyone.”
Whereas Butcher insists that judges “hopefully are leaving their biases behind them,” he too believes the JSS may assist eradicate these components and do extra to create a good enjoying discipline.
But an absence of transparency round how and when JSS is utilized in competitors might undermine this ultimate. Rating sheets at FIG occasions don’t presently embrace inquiries, so there are not any recorded particulars about how routines had been reviewed in competitors, together with whether or not JSS was used. Rating sheets don’t embrace itemized deductions, both. With the intention to decide when JSS was used on the 2023 World Championships, I needed to contact particular person judges who’re excessive up within the FIG; even they couldn’t inform me precisely what number of occasions the JSS was used. This info merely isn’t recorded.
I used to be solely in a position to affirm it was used within the case of Srbić after connecting with the lads’s technical president; Srbić mentioned through e-mail that even he didn’t know if JSS was used to resolve his inquiry.
Butcher advised me that following the 2023 World Championships, athletes ought to have been despatched a hyperlink to a web site to see how their routines had been judged by JSS, to assist them make enhancements. However after I contacted Kaia and Kim Tanskanen after the competitors, they mentioned she hadn’t acquired any details about AI judging both throughout or after the competitors. (Butcher says that is possible a communication subject with the Finnish federation, although Satu Murtonen, the technical director of Finland’s Girls’s Creative Gymnastics, tells me, “Sadly, I don’t keep in mind receiving any details about the robotic judging.”)