The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says it’s exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a means of stepping up its fight against doping.
According to WADA’s director general, Olivier Niggli, “we’re having discussions on artificial intelligence going forward. There’s a lot of promising things.”
WADA says it plans to implement a new AI pilot program in the coming weeks, which they believe can be used to identify suspicious athletes, raise red flags and improve how testing is targeted.
For instance, athletes whose biological passports were flagged by AI would not immediately face disciplinary procedures, but rather serve as a targeting tool, notifying the agency of where it should be concentrating its testing resources.
“There’s a lot of data that is being collected in anti-doping – whether it is through the [athlete biological] passports, through the tests, through the results of the athletes. If you manage to create a system that will meaningfully use this data I think you can create some very powerful tools”, added Niggli.
Niggli also suggested the possibility of the technology allowing WADA to analyzing data retrospectively.
“I hope that in five years we will be much better at analyzing all this data that we already have and are already collected. It’s a complex world which requires complex answers.”
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