AI is getting a tryout in pro sports

Richard Zemel, an AI consultant for the Toronto Raptors, tells Axios that among things that could transform a season are forecasting an opposing team's next play, or signaling whether, if you swap out one player for another, "we go on to win the championship." How it would work: For a picture of what we're talking about, I went to Rob Schumaker, a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Tyler and co-author of Sports Data Mining. That is all theoretical, though, because, as of now, sports AI is in its infancy: Mark Silver, president of Synergy Sports Technology, a data and analytics firm for basketball teams, says that at the moment, live, in-game forecasting is something from a "fantasy world." Not only has no one figured out how to predict plays or the future performance of players, but they also don't know how they would apply the knowledge if they obtained it. "You couldn't communicate the information fast enough" to players on the court, he said.