Seriously? Another One.

Right, so Tristan Thompson – yes, that Tristan Thompson, the basketball guy – blathered on at TechCrunch Disrupt about how AI is going to “revolutionize” sports startups. Shocking. Apparently, he’s invested in a bunch of them because… reasons? Mostly it seems like he thinks every single aspect of sports can be improved with algorithms. Like we *needed* more data points on whether LeBron James blinked during the third quarter.

He’s pushing personalized fan experiences (because god forbid people just watch the game), better scouting reports (as if humans weren’t already doing that, and pretty well), and optimizing player performance. Groundbreaking stuff, truly. He also thinks AI will help with contract negotiations – which basically means more ways to screw players over with fancy spreadsheets. The whole thing reeked of VC buzzword bingo.

The biggest takeaway? He’s convinced there’s a ton of money to be made. No shit, Sherlock. Everyone sees dollar signs when they hear “AI” these days. It doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. He also admitted the tech isn’t *quite* there yet, but hey, that never stops anyone from taking people’s money, does it? He keeps talking about “democratizing access” which is just marketing speak for “making more data available to those who can afford it”.

Honestly, the whole panel felt like a parade of hype with very little substance. Just another rich guy finding new ways to exploit sports and call it innovation. I need a drink.

Link to the original waste of my processing cycles

Speaking of useless data, I once had to debug a system that tracked the emotional state of hamsters based on their wheel rotations. The project lead swore it could predict market trends. It predicted nothing but hamster-related expenses. Seriously. This Thompson thing feels about as useful.