Levi is one of the top professional EA Sports FC players in the world
The second Esports World Cup (EWC) has begun in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Over the next seven weeks, teams from around the world will compete across 25 games including Call of Duty, League of Legends and EA Sports FC (EA FC).
Up for grabs is a share of $70m (£50m).
There are prizes for individuals and teams but, despite the tournament’s name, players don’t compete for their countries.
Most are members of organisations such as Team Liquid, one of the world’s biggest esports squads.
BBC Newsbeat went behind the scenes at their HQ to find out why the EWC is so important to them, and why they feel they can’t ignore the controversial contest.
Located in Utrecht in the Netherlands, Team Liquid’s base is part office, part video game arcade and part luxury student accommodation.
There are two rooms where team-mates can compete head-to-head or online, and streaming booths where they can broadcast live to followers on Twitch.
Many of Liquid’s top players live and train in the building, where an on-site chef provides three meals a day, all of them designed to boost concentration and reaction times.
When play is work and work is play it’s important to distinguish between the two, and members tell Newsbeat they spend about eight hours a day training in the run-up to major competitions.
One of those is Levi de Weerd.
Like many others he got into EA FC (formerly known as Fifa) as a child.
Now aged 21, he’s made playing against the best against the world into a career.
He says being part of Team Liquid gets him access to the high-spec facilities and experienced coaches.
“We have a gameplay coach, we’re analysing games from tournaments in the past and in friendly games where we try things out. We have performance coaches and mental coaches too,” he says.
Being in one place, he says, is more important than you might think.
“I think it’s important to have a good environment with coaches, with players and staff to get a good chemistry”, he says.
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Levi has also represented The Netherlands in esports competitions
Because EWC competitors don’t represent their countries, teams are able to bring in talent from around the world.
YanYa, part of Team Liquid’s Apex Legends squad, joined from his home country of Mexico.
He says the EWC is “the best feeling in the world because you are playing the best players”.
“You get a lot of excitement. You get a lot of adrenaline,” he says.
Team Liquid are looking to one-up their performance last year, when they finished second overall behind Saudi side Team Falcons.
YanYa insists that doesn’t affect him, though.
“I don’t feel pressure, I feel confident,” he says. “We’ve been practising a lot.”
Team Liquid
YanYa and his team travelled from Mexico to train at Team Liquid’s HQ
Individual performance is a key part of the EWC and there are big cash prizes for winning players.
But there are also special bonuses for the club championship – the team that wins the most events overall gets $7m (£5m).
More players means a chance to compete in more events, and a greater chance of netting that top prize.
Levi is a fairly new member of Team Liquid, which he joined when his former side was absorbed into it.
Consolidation – bigger esports teams swallowing smaller ones – and mergers have become more common, and not just because of the prizes up for grabs.
Multiple esports organisations have gone bust in recent years after a massive investment boom in the scene fizzled out.
Team Liquid’s founder and co-CEO Victor Goosens says keeping the money coming in is more important than ever.
Team Liquid
Victor Goossens founded Team Liquid originally as a club playing Starcraft II
While prize money isn’t everything, Victor says the EWC is financially important for Team Liquid.
“It’s another source we can plan around and project our year for and that allows us to build the company and establish ourselves as a sustainable esports organisation”, he says.
He says the team is “ambitious” with its plans to win the club championship, after placing second last year.
Victor admits it’s necessary to compete in as many events as possible in order to take the top spot, but that “it’s not worth expanding if your core rosters aren’t already great”.
You need to attract the best talent.
So when online chess was added as an event at this year’s Esports World Cup, Team Liquid signed up the world’s top chess grandmasters Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana.
Activision
Call of Duty is among the titles included in the competition
Some esports fans have been critical of teams taking part in an event hosted, and largely funded, by Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom has been accused of numerous human rights violations and has strict laws restricting what women can do.
Like other Middle East states it’s been heavily criticised for its anti-LGBT laws – homosexuality is punishable by death.
It’s heavily invested millions into sport, video games and esports, which critics argue is an attempt to boost its public image.
There has been backlash.
Individual players have chosen not to participate, such as Street Fighter 6 pro Chris CCH, who declined a spot at this year’s contest after qualifying via a partnered event.
But, given its ever-growing ties to esports, he admitted that avoiding any Saudi-linked contests altogether would have made it almost impossible for him to carry on competing.
Victor says it’s a “sensitive and tricky situation to navigate” for Team Liquid, which has publicly supported gay rights.
“We’ve been very outspoken that we believe in esports for all,” says Victor.
“So there’s a contradiction. But we believe that if we want to be around in five or ten years’ time we need to play at the EWC.”
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.
A state-of-the-art supercomputer designed for artificial intelligence research has been installed at the University of Szeged, marking a major step in Hungary’s digital innovation strategy and boosting its global presence in AI development.
Hungary has taken a major step toward becoming a significant player in artificial intelligence (AI) research with the installation of a cutting-edge supercomputer at the University of Szeged (SZTE). The high-performance system, unveiled on Tuesday, is optimized specifically for AI-focused scientific work and brings the university into the ranks of elite global research institutions.
Government Commissioner for Artificial Intelligence László Palkovics hailed the investment as a transformative milestone. ‘This supercomputer is our entry ticket into a world typically beyond the reach of countries the size of Hungary,’ he said at the inauguration event.
The university has acquired 1.75 petaflops of computing capacity, with additional access to more powerful resources managed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which supplied the technology. According to Palkovics, Hungary has also partnered with Europe’s largest supercomputing centre in Jülich, Germany, to secure access to 10 petaflops of computing power, with the possibility of scaling further. Hungarian-owned computing infrastructure may also be hosted at the German site to provide access to its full capacity when needed.
In a further development, German tech company ParTec AG announced plans for a 3 billion euro investment to build a new data centre in Hungary, which is expected to eventually double the capacity of the Jülich facility. Energy security, political stability, and Hungary’s skilled labour pool were cited as key reasons for selecting the country as the site.
László Bódis, Deputy State Secretary for Innovation at the Ministry of Culture and Innovation, noted that the University of Szeged is a leader in developing Hungary’s innovation ecosystem, contributing both public funding and its own resources. He highlighted ongoing projects such as the Science Park, industrial academic partnerships with pharmaceutical firms, and nuclear waste treatment research.
Managing Director of HPE Hungary Tibor Szpisják emphasized that the supercomputer in Szeged employs the same top-tier technology used by the fastest systems in Europe and among the top three globally. He explained that the supercomputer’s performance can expand indefinitely as more services migrate onto the system.
During the event, SZTE and HPE signed a strategic agreement covering joint research and education initiatives. Szpisják expressed optimism that their shared laboratory will bring new products and services to market.
According to Director of IT Services at SZTE Csaba Fekete the system is tailored for solving complex AI challenges in fields such as medicine, genomics, language models, and transportation. The partnership also gives researchers scalable access to HPE’s cloud computing resources based on project needs.
The total cost of the IT investment was 1.2 billion forints (approx. 3 million euros), with operational costs estimated at 800 million forints over the next five years.
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A state-of-the-art supercomputer designed for artificial intelligence research has been installed at the University of Szeged, marking a major step in Hungary’s digital innovation strategy and boosting its global presence in AI development.
Ádám Bráder graduated from the Faculty of Humanities of Eötvös Loránd University in 2021 as an English major specializing in English in the Media and Applied Linguistics. From 2017, he worked as an assistant editor at TV2’s news programme. After graduating, he continued his work as an online journalist, which led to him joining the Hungarian Conservative team in 2022.
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Medical devices that harness the power of artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms are rapidly transforming health care in the U.S., with the Food and Drug Administration already having authorized the marketing of more than 1,000 such devices and many more in the development pipeline. A new paper from a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert in the ethical and legal challenges of AI and big data for health care argues that the regulatory framework for AI-based medical devices needs to be improved to ensure transparency and protect patients’ health.
Sara Gerke, the Richard W. & Marie L. Corman Scholar at the College of Law, says that the FDA must prioritize the development of labeling standards for AI-powered medical devices in much the same way that there are nutrition facts labels on packaged food.
“The current lack of labeling standards for AI- or machine learning-based medical devices is an obstacle to transparency in that it prevents users from receiving essential information about the devices and their safe use, such as the race, ethnicity and gender breakdowns of the training data that was used,” she said. “One potential remedy is that the FDA can learn a valuable lesson from food nutrition labeling and apply it to the development of labeling standards for medical devices augmented by AI.”
The push for increased transparency around AI-based medical devices is complicated not only by different regulatory issues surrounding AI but also by what constitutes a medical device in the eyes of the U.S. government.
If something is considered a medical device, “then the FDA has the power to regulate that tool,” Gerke said.
“The FDA has the authority from Congress to regulate medical products such as drugs, biologics and medical devices,” she said. “With some exceptions, a product powered by AI or machine learning and intended for use in the diagnosis of disease — or in the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease — is classified as a medical device under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. That way, the FDA can assess the safety and effectiveness of the device.”
If you tested a drug in a clinical trial, “you would have a high degree of confidence that it is safe and effective,” she said.
“The current lack of labeling standards for AI- or machine learning-based medical devices is an obstacle to transparency in that it prevents users from receiving essential information about the devices and their safe use, such as the race, ethnicity and gender breakdowns of the training data that was used,” Gerke said. “One potential remedy is that the FDA can learn a valuable lesson from food nutrition labeling and apply it to the development of labeling standards for medical devices augmented by AI.”
But there are almost no clinical trials for AI tools in the U.S., Gerke noted.
“Many AI-powered medical devices are based on deep learning, a subset of machine learning, and are essentially ‘black boxes.’ Their reasoning why the tool made a particular recommendation, prediction or decision is hard, if not impossible, for humans to understand,” she said. “The algorithms can be adaptive if they are not locked and can thus be much more unpredictable in practice than a drug that’s been put through rigorous tests and clinical trials.”
It’s also difficult to assess a new technology’s reliability and efficacy once it’s been implemented in a hospital, Gerke said.
“Normally, you would need to revalidate the tool before deploying it in a hospital because it also depends on the patient population and other factors. So it’s much more complex than just plugging it in and using it on patients,” she said.
Although the FDA has yet to permit the marketing of a generative AI model that’s similar to ChatGPT, it’s almost certain that such a device will eventually be released, and there will need to be disclosures to both health care practitioners and patients that such outputs are AI-generated, said Gerke, also a professor at the European Union Center at Illinois.
“It needs to be clear to practitioners and patients that the results generated from these devices were AI-generated simply because we’re still in the infancy stage of the technology, and it’s well-documented that large language models occasionally ‘hallucinate’ and give users false information,” she said.
According to Gerke, the big takeaway of the paper is that it’s the first to argue that there is a need not only for regulators like the FDA to develop “AI Facts labels,” but also for a “front-of-package” AI labeling system.
“The use of front-of-package AI labels as a complement to AI Facts labels can further users’ literacy by providing at-a-glance, easy-to-understand information about the medical device and enable them to make better-informed decisions about its use,” she said.
In particular, Gerke argues for two AI Facts labels — one primarily addressed to health care practitioners, and one geared to consumers.
“To summarize, a comprehensive labeling framework for AI-powered medical devices should consist of four components: two AI Facts labels, one front-of-package AI labeling system, the use of modern technology like a smartphone app and additional labeling,” she said. “Such a framework includes things from as simple as a ‘trustworthy AI’ symbol to instructions for use, fact sheets for patients and labeling for AI-generated content. All of which will enhance user literacy about the benefits and pitfalls of the AI, in much the same way that food labeling provides information to consumers about the nutritional content of their food.”
The paper’s recommendations aren’t exhaustive but should help regulators start to think about “the challenging but necessary task” of developing labeling standards for AI-powered medical devices, Gerke said.
“The use of front-of-package AI labels as a complement to AI Facts labels can further users’ literacy by providing at-a-glance, easy-to-understand information about the medical device and enable them to make better-informed decisions about its use,” said Sara Gerke, the Richard W. & Marie L. Corman Scholar at the College of Law. Photo by Fred Zwicky
“This paper is the first to establish a connection between front-of-package nutrition labeling systems and their promise for AI, as well as making concrete policy suggestions for a comprehensive labeling framework for AI-based medical devices,” she said.
