From Amateurs to World Cup, Intel AI is Poised to Benefit Athletes at Every Level with Jonathan Lee

This week, lace up your boots and be sure to stretch, because we have an exciting new Future of Tech to share with you!

Avishai had a chance to sit down with Jonathan Lee, the Senior Director of Sports Performance Technology for Intel. If you never connected Intel and sports technology before, you certainly will after this conversation. 

In this lively conversation, Jonathan dives deep into how Intel’s AI is benefiting all facets of sports, from player performance to fan experience, and even advanced athlete scouting in underserved areas. Throughout the episode, he shares countless ways in which Intel’s technology is affecting the world of athletics for elite professionals and weekend warriors alike, highlighting the myriad ways these innovations will impact sports on every level. 

Enjoy the episode!

Main Takeaways:
Creating Scalable Athletic Solutions: Jonathan shares how AI solutions can scale to serve multiple types of athletes, from elite professionals to casual players, as well as benefiting the health and wellness space.

AI and How It Will Redefine Athlete Scouting: Intel’s AI Scout is changing the way player performance is evaluated, using 3D analysis to objectively gauge an athlete’s potential against a growing field of competitors.

Bringing Athletic Opportunities to Underserved Areas: Jonathan shares an inspiring story of how AI Scout made it possible for two unknown prospects from a remote village to be discovered and considered for an organized football program.

Key Quotes: 

(16:29)“For sports, there are many applications that involve, how do we get athletes to perform better. Or how do we enhance a broadcast so that a fan feels more engaged with the action?  And we're at an exciting place right now in technology where we have things that really bridged the gap between the athlete and the fan.”
(18:19)“A lot of the things that we work on are meant to democratize and allow technology to be not just by the very elite athletes, but all the athletes on the team, and not just all the athletes on a pro or elite team, but actually down through your weekend warrior, your consumer, even in the health space as well.”
(22:37): “We use computer vision to extract 25 or more key points from the body, and then whether you use one camera or multiple cameras, we can create a 3D model of the athlete. And then from there, we can calculate biomechanics, kinematics, and provide that to a developer, or in some cases, we've built our own applications on top of that. Again, this is without the use of any sensors or suits. It's just AI.
(34:28): “Last year as a team, Purdue [baseball team] stole 48 bases. That put them at 130 first out of all the teams in the country. This year they stole 116, which ranked them number 10, right? And they had a great season. We're really at the cusp here on how to use tech to actually improve performance, right? And it's being demonstrated.” 
(54:35): “Being able to, to provide that information in, in real-time or near real-time would be something that would, that, that, um, would make the gym experience a bit more compelling as well as safe.”