3 hours ago
1 ARTICLE AD
The data said he wasn't running enough. The footage said he was always in the “perfect tactical position.”
Chaos Soccer Gear / Unsplash
Brazil has more World Cup titles than anyone, five of them to be precise, but after going through five straight tournaments without adding to that count, the team is leaning hard on data this time.
Every player wears a sensor-packed “smart vest” tracking field position (via GPS), heart rate, and a stat called “player load,” the same kind of numbers that your Whoop band or Apple Watch brags about, but tuned specifically for the sport.
Unsplash
So what exactly do these smart vests track?
The vests sit under the jersey, and Brazil uses them for its men’s, women’s, and youth teams. Every club sends the match or practice data back to the national team on a daily basis.
That lets sports science chief Guilherme Passos monitor plenty of metrics including sprint speeds, fatigue, and hamstring rehab, not just for the national team, but for players scattered across continents.
The smart vests stay on during World Cup matches as well, helping decide which player needs rest between games. Here’s the twist, and an interesting one no less.
Passos once flagged a player covering only around 3.7 miles a match, which is about half what other teammates ran. By the numbers, he looked like a slacker.
Unsplash
Why did the data almost get one of Brazil’s players benched?
But when coaches reviewed the video footage, they realized that the player, in Passos’s own words, ȧs always in the right spot, in the perfect tactical position (via BBC).
The player’s identity is a secret, for obvious reasons, but it’s the lesson that’s more important here: playing better doesn’t mean running more on the field, and the smartest player on the field can have the most boring smart vest data.
This isn’t unique to Brazil, though. FIFA cleared GPS vest systems for official matches back in 2015. Most of the 48 teams at this World Cup are using similar setups from companies like Catapult and STATSports, the same brands behind a lot of consumer fitness gear.
FIFA has leaned further into the data trend this year with Football AI Pro, an assistant built with Lenovo. It uses machine learning to analyze match data and feed instant insights to coaches and players.
For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…
Meta employees are revolting against its AI rules and it’s a lesson for us all
Employee frustration is spilling into public view as Meta doubles down on AI
Meta's aggressive push into artificial intelligence is facing growing resistance from an unexpected group: its own employees.
According to a recent report from WIRED, frustration inside Meta has reached a boiling point following a series of AI-related restructuring efforts, layoffs, and workplace policies. The tensions became public this week when an employee interrupted a company-wide livestream with an expletive-filled rant directed at Meta's AI leadership, shocking thousands of colleagues watching the presentation.
Buying a laptop may soon come with an instant carbon score thanks to AI
Researchers want AI to calculate the environmental cost of your next laptop
When shopping for a new laptop, most buyers compare specifications like performance, battery life, display quality, and price. But a new AI-powered initiative could soon add another metric to that list: carbon footprint.
Researchers are developing AI agents capable of calculating and displaying the environmental impact of consumer electronics in real time, potentially giving shoppers instant access to sustainability information before making a purchase. The effort aims to bring the kind of emissions transparency already available in services like flight booking platforms to the world of consumer technology.
The US government just hit the brakes on Anthropic’s most powerful AI models
Anthropic disables Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after US government directive
Anthropic’s troubles with the US government do not seem to be easing. The company has now been ordered to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, including foreign national Anthropic employees working inside the United States.
Anthropic said it received the directive on June 12 and is disabling the two models for all customers to comply. Other Anthropic models are not affected. The government has not publicly explained the full national security concern, but Anthropic says it understands the order is linked to a reported method for bypassing, or jailbreaking, Fable 5’s safeguards.
