Major sports leaders believe artificial intelligence will play a massive role in sports very soon.
Speaking on The Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday, several league commissioners acknowledged the importance of improving sports technology and the increasing role that artificial intelligence will soon play in their respective leagues.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver gave the most specific response, saying he expects the league will eventually adopt a system that will use AI to rule on “objective” rulings such as out-of-bounds calls.
“Those calls will be done by an AI, automated system with cameras lined around the court,” Silver said. “And it will take all those so-called objective calls out of the hands of the referees. It will be instantaneous, it will be automatic.”
He compared the system to the Hawk-Eye technology used in tennis for ruling on line calls. (The technology has faced some backlash from players due to wrong calls, most recently by women’s No. 2 Elena Rybakina, who claimed an AI-ruled call against her was “absolutely wrong.”)
