Sport and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Human and Machine Futures

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the capacity to deliver generative, complex, and powerful functions and decisions. Sport offers a unique site for AI development and implementation, yet the sociological significance of AI in sport remains understudied. We consider sport-based AI applications en route to describing the promise of AI in sport in four ways: (a) the promise of supercharged data parsing at scale, (b) the promise of supercharged precision, (c) the promise of supercharged personalization; and (d) the promise of supercharged prediction. We argue in turn that AI is an emergent cultural form in sport that foregrounds labor automation as a pathway to efficiency but also brings potential for substantial disruption. We further contend that sport is a use case for AI at a moment when the legitimacy of AI is intensely debated.