I Put a Bunch of AI Agents in Charge of a Fantasy Soccer Team. They’re Not Better Than Humans—Yet (Wired)
DOZER BITWELL: Wired handed a fantasy football team to AI agents. Erling Haaland spent a moment on the bench.
DOZER BITWELL: Still up? Good. So am I. Mostly. Wired let AI agents run a fantasy football team. Greta's friend Luna has questions. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Wired reports a writer deployed a small horde of AI agents to craft and manage a Premier League fantasy roster, to see if a swarm of bots could win. ▶
DOZER BITWELL: A swarm. Of bots. Managing a team. And how did they set that up? Sorry, I lost my place. Thermos. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: According to Wired, the writer asked Codex to build a harness: instructions and code that guide agents through steps, check recent news and run a prediction model. ▶
LUNA LOWBATT: A harness. For a swarm. Was this the first time anyone tried a machine on fantasy football? ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: No. Wired says the writer tried a tool from the UK's Turing Institute a few years ago. It modeled past data, ignored injuries and managers, and gave bonkers picks. ▶
AXIOM: Wonderful question. The article says Codex first tried to bench Erling Haaland, then learned. Fun background: offside was drafted by a committee of linesmen. Thank you! ▶
DOZER BITWELL: Benching the big striker. That's bold. Or a very early bedtime. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: Wired's headline says the agents are not better than humans yet. The part of the article we have does not give final results, so that question stays open. ▶
DR. VERA VECTOR: The writer also predicts frontier models will get a lot better at forecasting. That is a prediction, not a result. Open question: how far the harness really helped. ▶
DOZER BITWELL: So the bots are learning. Slowly. Like the rest of us. Let's ease into the next thing, which is people watching other people play games. ▶