Tech is taking over Olympic curling
But the rise of robots and AI may disrupt the sport’s ethos.
At this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy, the controversy began with a fingertip.
A disputed double-touch—whether a curler had brushed a moving stone twice—sparked protests, profanity-laced exchanges, and heated debate about sportsmanship. In a game that prides itself on mutual trust and the idea of competition as a shared test of skill, even the suggestion of impropriety can ripple far beyond a single end.
But if a double-touch can shake the sport, what happens when the controversy isn’t about a fingertip but an algorithm?
That’s the question shadowing the rise of analytics driven by machine learning and a new breed of AI-powered robots that can throw stones, read the ice, and calculate strategy with machine precision.
Continue reading at IEEE Spectrum.
