The gymnastics world championships in Germany, the biggest gymnastics meet outside the Olympics, for the first time used an artificial intelligence system to evaluate athletes' performance. The gymnastics world championships in Germany, the biggest gymnastics meet outside the Olympics, for the first time used an artificial intelligence (AI) system to evaluate athletes' performance by measuring and analyzing skeletal positions, speed, and angles via three-dimensional laser sensors. International Gymnastics Federation president Morinari Watanabe envisions such robot judges eliminating human error and subjectivity from gymnastics contests; "this is a step toward the challenge of justice through technology," Watanabe said. At the world championships, the AI system was a means for human judges to confirm scores when gymnasts either formally contested their score, or the score widely deviated between judges. International Gymnastics Federation sports director Steve Butcher said all athlete information collected at the competition would be discarded at a predetermined expiration date, to address privacy concerns.

Thanks to all this, Watanabe explained, no longer would gymnasts -- many of whom, he noted, had started gymnastics as young as age 3 and had trained competitively for more than a decade -- risk having their efforts unceremoniously wasted by human error or interference. "This is a step toward the challenge of justice through technology," Watanabe said. The debut of such technology at the biggest gymnastics meet outside the Olympics represented a meaningful milestone in a sport periodically marred by judging controversies and often wracked with questions about political influence in scoring decisions. For all the grand language, and for all the big-picture prophesying it has inspired about the future of sports -- baseball is already experimenting with robot umpires, and tennis is starting to expand electronic line-calling -- the steps unveiled in Stuttgart were preliminary, and fairly subtle. In gymnastics, at least, humans very much remain in control.