ZHENG HUANSONG/XINHUA/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
That’s one motive Kaia (whose coach is Kim Tanskanen, her mom) is hopeful about how JSS might change competitors: “I really feel just like the scoring could be extra even,” she says.
“Particularly the smaller nations 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 remove that, I believe it would make it somewhat extra of a good probability for everyone.”
Whereas Butcher insists that judges “hopefully are leaving their biases behind them,” he too believes the JSS might assist remove these elements and do extra to create a fair taking part in subject.
But an absence of transparency round how and when JSS is utilized in competitors might undermine this excellent. Rating sheets at FIG occasions don’t at the moment embody inquiries, so there aren’t any recorded particulars about how routines had been reviewed in competitors, together with whether or not JSS was used. Rating sheets don’t embody itemized deductions, both. With a purpose 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 capable of affirm it was used within the case of Srbić after connecting with the lads’s technical president; Srbić mentioned by way of electronic mail that even he didn’t know if JSS was used to resolve his inquiry.
Butcher informed me that following the 2023 World Championships, athletes ought to have been despatched a hyperlink to an internet 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 doubtless a communication subject with the Finnish federation, although Satu Murtonen, the technical director of Finland’s Ladies’s Creative Gymnastics, tells me, “Sadly, I don’t bear in mind receiving any details about the robotic judging.”)
When requested extra broadly about transparency, Butcher factors out {that a} ignorance about scoring isn’t dissimilar from the state of affairs in different sports activities wherein “athletes and coaches don’t get particular info relating to the deliberations” of judges or referees. He additionally says the JSS undertaking “will proceed to evolve in providing larger equity and transparency.”
Trying forward, Fujitsu is concentrated on commercializing the know-how in order that it may be bought to gymnastics federations to make use of in apply. “Coaching is actually the place we want this,” Butcher says. “We want the federations to have the ability to buy the Fujitsu system … and thru that use, the gymnasts enhance.”