By: Nick Gambino
In a historical if not controversial move, it’s just been announced that the X Games are adding an AI judge to the halfpipe snowboard competition this week in Aspen, Colorado. This should go over well with zero backlash from snowboard purists.
The specific AI technology was developed for the event by X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom (who happens to be a legendary freestyle skier himself) and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. They used Google Cloud tools to fasten it into exactly what to look for and evaluate in a snowboard run.
“Part of subjective sports, we see it all over the place, is that even at their best, humans can get it wrong,” Bloom said of the new artificial judge. “Sometimes getting it wrong has huge implications. What if we could give judges superpowers and they could see things they couldn’t see with the human eye, and this technology could help inform them?”
If all goes well in this week’s Aspen test, we’ll probably see the AI judge incorporated into more X Games events in the future. And if it’s proven without a doubt that this is a more precise and accurate judge than a human, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it at the Olympics some day. For now, the AI judgement won’t have an effect on the official scoring of the athlete. It’s simply an experiment.
You can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about AI. The burgeoning technology is being fastened into every aspect of tech. But the excitement for cutting-edge AI doesn’t outweigh the controversy and backlash.
There are many purists who see AI as a threat to jobs and human art itself. While I am certainly on the side of humans here, wanting AI to stay in its lane, I do see value in AI as a tool. It can boost our productivity and take care of some of the more tedious tasks. I’m just interested in being replaced.
I’ll put it like this: if it’s like going from the typewriter to the computer, I’m all for it. But if it’s like going from the typewriter to a self-generating typewriter that doesn’t “need” a human then no thank you.
