The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) President Thomas Bach announced the Olympic AI Agenda last week in London, setting out a number of areas for focus at the upcoming Paris Olympics and beyond.
Stats Perform’s reputation as the global leader in Sports AI saw our Chief Scientist Patrick Lucey invited by the IOC to help develop the Agenda as a founding member of their AI Working Group in 2023.
Patrick joined a small panel of experts from around the world, including AI pioneers, academics, athletes and executives from technology companies. They undertook a broad review of uses of AI in sport and identified high-impact areas where the IOC could inspire the use of AI in its role as leader of the Olympic Movement, and owner of the Olympic Games.
Patrick gave expert perspectives on many applications of AI in sport, based on his pioneering work at Stats Perform since 2015. This included Computer Vision, Generative AI, the importance of quality data inputs and the various ways professional teams and sports media use our AI-powered services, including Opta Vision and AutoStats as well as PressBox Graphics and PressBox Live.
“I really enjoyed the whole experience” said Patrick at the IOC Olympic Agenda launch at London’s Lee Valley Velopark on 19 April.
“It was inspiring to be reminded how sport and the Olympic movement are such positive forces, and how utilizing AI at scale has the potential to level the playing field, how it can be used as a vehicle for education as well as enabling things to be done in more sustainable and efficient ways.”
“Additionally, I really enjoyed the cross-functional nature of the group, obtaining different insight from gold-medallists, IOC members, leading academics and technology leaders in industry – all with the same goal, but with different perspectives.”
“Given how quickly things change in terms of AI and its potential to create opportunities across so many areas, I’m very supportive of the IOC’s initiative to create such an agenda. We’re all mindful that the guidelines need to be continually revisited and also general enough to stay relevant. Hopefully we’ve set a good example for how to go about setting a set of AI guidelines for an organization,” he added.
For further perspectives on AI in sport please see Patrick’s recent Q1 update on the Applications of Generative AI, and his Keynote Session at the 2024 Opta Forum.
To read the Olympics AI Agenda please see https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-ai-agenda