The Hauser Report: Boxing and Artificial Intelligence

The Hauser Report: Boxing and Artificial Intelligence

There has been a lot of talk recently about artificial intelligence and its use by students in writing term papers that are submitted as original work. Microsoft has developed the most promising of these technologies. But ChatGPT (in addition to having glitches) has been inundated by requests for access and doesn’t have the capacity to handle new subscribers at the present time. Other content generators are proliferating, but their work product is often suspect.

A friend of mine went to an AI site called InferKit [https://app.inferkit.com/demo] and asked it to generate an article that begins with the sentence, “Thomas Hauser ran into Eddie Hearn at the last Matchroom Event.” InferKit generated the following article in response:

Thomas Hauser ran into Eddie Hearn at the last Matchroom Event. A lot of talk about becoming a promoter, a girl who wasn’t his, and Danny Williams occurred, and that’s it. The two went on to chat about a fight for Joshua currently in the works for a certain date. Hearn said that he hopes to be taking Joshua to St. Louis on June 16th.

From there, Hauser admitted he had no idea it was Hearn and left quickly. As most in boxing do, I took that as a way to see if my sources were anywhere close to being right about Joshua.

 So, where does this sit, you ask?

 Is Joshua coming to St. Louis?

 Not likely.

 Is Joshua coming to St. Louis at some point?

Not likely, but in today’s climate it’s probably not beyond the realm of possibility. St. Louis would be a great place for Joshua to continue to rise in the sport. It would only take one big-name fight to sell a stadium of 20,000 or 30,000, or in this case, 35,000 in the Pontiac Silverdome.

 The Joshua fans in St. Louis will always be there for Joshua. It’s their hometown and he already has a fan base there. Joshua will continue to bring his fans there as he becomes more and more known in the United States.

 So, what about St. Louis?

 St. Louis is probably more realistic for Joshua in a smaller venue. Madison Square Garden and St. Louis Rams Stadium seem like the only realistic options. Joshua can’t afford to mess up another big payday if he’s really on the cusp of becoming a big star.

This is likely to be a no-brainer for the man who put this on the table for Joshua, though, and that is Barry Hearn. Hearn sees St. Louis as a much more viable market than in years past and he knows how much money he could make from a big name fight in the city. I can’t see Joshua not agreeing to St. Louis.

Takashi Miura will headline on June 17th against Yoshihiro Kamegai.

Next, I asked InferKit for an article about Don King and Donald Trump (who King endorsed when the latter ran for president in 2016 and 2020). InferKit generated the following:

Can Don King back up what he’s saying about his chances for the 2020 presidential election?

Well, King is a natural-born citizen. So he qualifies under the Constitution’s clause on “natural born citizens”. That’s got to count for something, right?

Or is it. Well, that depends.

One thing Trump has going for him is that as of right now he is still the President of the United States. And he has a campaign committee and that committee is headed up by Don. That may not be sufficient evidence, but it may be enough to elevate Don’s claim to the level of proof, for now, of flimsy evidence.

Here is the statement from Don King confirming his intention to sue Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump’s talk about the KKK and not voting for a black president in his November election is disgusting and disgraceful. America needs to know he is not a genuine black man. I will sue him for slanderous comments if he doesn’t retract them.”

The comment from Don is that Donald Trump is a bigot and he intends to sue him. He also says that he doesn’t care if Trump wins the election because he will be in jail.

So . . . Where does this leave us?

There’s a theory that, if you take an infinite number of monkeys and sit them down at an infinite number of keyboards and let them type for an infinite length of time, eventually the monkeys will type all of the world’s great works of literature. The articles above read like two of the monkeys’ lesser efforts.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – In the Inner Sanctum: Behind the Scenes at Big Fights – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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