Article: The Intertwining of AI and the Olympics

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The quadrennial Olympic Games stand above all sporting events in the world for the sheer breadth of sports, including, among others, track and field, fencing and swimming, gymnastics, and even surfing. The 2024 Summer Olympics will open in Paris, France, on Friday, July 26th, and run for over two weeks, with the final ceremony on August 11th. The games will feature 10,500 athletes hailing from over 200 countries competing in 329 events in 32 sports. (9news.com)  The modern-day Olympics based on ancient Greek Olympic games first took place in Athens in 1896 with the intent to have the games hosted every four years by a different country. The first Olympics focused on traditional sports such as running, jumping, javelin, swimming, etc. Later games also included additional sports such as wrestling and five categories of art--painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music. Competition in the arts continued until 1948. Today’s Olympics have grown and transformed from an international event for amateur athletes into a massive spectacle that includes professional and amateur athletes competing for gold medals, valuable endorsement deals, and success in social media.

With the high stakes and fierce competition, it may come as no surprise that artificial intelligence now plays many roles in the modern Olympic Games. Coaches use AI tools to optimize athletes’ training and tools such as Nebraska-based Hudle’s Sportscode to analyze their opponents’ weaknesses and build a strategy for upcoming games. AI will also assist in refereeing games, analyzing fouls and contested goals using multiple cameras to create a 3D replay of the event to support a referee’s call on the field. AI also helps athletes perfect their game by analyzing their motions, such as a golf or tennis swing, or how an athlete handles a ball or performs a stroke while swimming.

Interestingly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which governs the games, released a document titled “Olympic AI Agenda.” (olympics.com) In the Olympic AI Agenda document, the IOC lays out an extensive position on how it will use AI and how it plans to protect the Athletes from AI. The IOC established the goal to leverage AI across five areas of focus that include supporting athletes in clean competition and safe sport, distributing the benefits of AI to all the Athletes, use AI to make the games more energy efficient, make the IOC  more efficient, and grow engagement with the fans. Additionally, the IOC wants to use AI to minimize risk to the athletes mental and physical health by monitoring and editing in real-time social media for cyber violence and bullying. According the IOC, they have developed an AI system that will monitor the expected 500,000,000 social media posts in 35 languages around the Olympics, flag offensive posts so that social media platforms such as Instagram or X can deal with them effectively.

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will feature over ten thousand athletes from 200+ countries continuing a tradition that began in Athens in 1896. Artificial intelligence now plays a significant role in the Olympics, assisting coaches in training optimization, aiding referees in decision-making, and helping athletes perfect their techniques. The International Olympic Committee has released an "Olympic AI Agenda" outlining plans to leverage AI in five key areas, including supporting clean competition, distributing AI benefits to all athletes, and enhancing energy efficiency. Additionally, the IOC plans to use AI to monitor and moderate social media content related to the Olympics, aiming to protect athletes from cyberviolence and bullying across an expected 500 million posts in 35 languages. Is censorship the answer to protecting athletes from the cruelties of social media? Perhaps a good course that recommends how to handle social media could help protect athletes without compromising free speech.

Dr. Smith’s career in scientific and information research spans the areas of bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, toxicology, and chemistry. He has published a number of peer-reviewed scientific papers. He has worked over the past seventeen years developing advanced analytics, machine learning, and knowledge management tools to enable research and support high-level decision making. Tim completed his Ph.D. in Toxicology at Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Washington.

You can buy his book on Amazon in paperback and in kindle format here.