Will AI change the way we do sports? And if so, for the better or worse?

Scientists and sports apparel companies work on a new generation of wearables that will do way more than tracking our steps and heartbeat. Just how far will they go?

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By Janine Gürtler

Almost everything we do is measured. You order some ingredients for dinner on Amazon, ask Alexa to look up a recipe and the product recommendation engine can determine that you likely need to purchase a certain type of saucepan.  Artificial intelligence has made our lives so much easier. But it has also made us transparent like never before. Now, science, the tech sector, and sports article manufacturers are taking the screening of the human being to the next level – onto the human body.

Data, data, data

Let’s just take the fitness tracker you might use to work out. It counts your steps, measures your heart rate, maybe even tracks your sleep pattern. But the simple collection of data seems to be like from the Stone Age compared to what’s coming next. The future of sports, experts believe, lies in artificial intelligence (AI). Wearable technology will go way beyond measuring biological parameters. It will change the way we do sports.

“What is happening now is, as we have more and more data collected, we are able to apply AI techniques in sports and any kind of wearables,” says Soumitra Dutta, Professor at the Cornell Tech University in New York. The AI-expert takes smart shoes as an example: By collecting the data of millions of runners, AI-software can recognize different running patterns, helping athletes to better understand what their optimal running style should look like.

AI in sports: Smart shoe inlays and pajamas

Technology is striving to become the new “secret sauce”, that will make or break any athlete. Today, companies like Racefox Run or Arion develop smart chest belts or running shoe inlays, that don’t only measure how far and fast you ran, but also tell you how you should run to hit peak performance. And Sportswear manufacturer Under Armour has woven special ceramic fibers into its Athlete Recovery Sleepwear that accelerates the regeneration of muscle fibers while they sleep.

Tech-enabled clothes like those still come with a hefty price tag: As for the devices already on the market, smart shoes or socks can easily cost $200 respectively; smart shirts, shorts or smart leggings can cost between $50 to $400 each.

So why buy?

Will smart fabrics conquer the masses?

That’s the million-dollar-question that the smart wear sector is still trying to answer. So far, high-tech wearables have found their niche in the professional sports sector, being mostly ignored by average users. But that will change, Cornell Tech-Professor Dutta believes.

“The cost level is already going down and when it’s more affordable, it gets more spread, more massified,” he says. Dutta is confident that smart fabrics will conquer the mass market within the next five years.

He might be right.

Experts are confident about the growing popularity of smart technology in sports, seeing the wearable sector gradually shifting from smartwatches and fitness trackers to smart clothing.  A March 2018 report by Juniper Research, a team of market research specialists, predicts that more than 7 million smart clothing units will be sold by 2020. Two years later, in 2022, it will already be close to 30 million.

AI in sports: You don’t get the full picture

However, AI in sports seems to be still in its infancy. “The biggest problem in the analysis is that the data is fragmented,” says Dutta. Companies like Fitbit might measure your heartbeat and tell you that you did a good job running today, but they don’t analyze the data for you, nor give you full access to it. “The holistic view of the health is missing,” says Dutta. Only in combination with health care data that medicine provides, Dutta says, you would really know if you’re fit or not. “There is no one who owns the entire data chain. That’s one reason why AI techniques are not very powerful right now.”

Someone who is working on that very issue is Zhenyu Li, associate professor in the George Washington University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. His team is developing a smart ring that might protect you from dying from a heart attack. “The ring is designed for people with chronic diseases or people that had previous heart attacks,” Li says in a phone interview.

With an algorithm interpreting the data in real-time, the ring can detect potential or severe heart problems – and may alert the wearer just in time to go to the emergency room and get an early treatment The smart ring, however, doesn’t spare you to see your doctor, stresses Li. “For a clear, distinctive ECG you’ll still have to examine parameters in the patient’s blood” – an analysis that a smart ring can’t provide.

Do we reveal too much?

With wearable technology apparently on its way to become a thing for everyone, shouldn’t we be suspicious to disclose so much data about ourselves, even more, if they are so sensitive ones? “Data by itself is neutral,” says Cornell Tech-professor Soumitra Dutta. “The issue is, what society and companies who collect the data do with it.”

Who would be accountable, once your health data is widely accessible and you have a heart attack? The tech company that developed a smart gadget with the promise of improving your health? Or the hospital? The whole issue of how health care data is managed and who is liable, is completely unclear,” says Dutta. “I can not tell you that if people wear Fitbits, they will be healthier, their quality of life will improve, they will be less obese. That is very hard to predict.”