
World Cup fever is in full swing. At the time of writing, Morocco is surpassing the odds after an impressive win against Portugal, and after this weekend it is unfortunately not “coming home” for England.
However, it's not just Morocco’s impressive winning streak that has been hitting the headlines, but also the use of technology (and specifically Artificial Intelligence technology) in the World Cup. Technology is being used in several ways - in refereeing (it seemed like the whole world weighed in on this Japan goal), crowd control and results predictions.
Artificial Intelligence or “AI”, in short, is the science of making machines smart. There will be an algorithm (computer program) created by a programmer which tells the computer what to do and what decision to make based on the output of that algorithm. A particular branch of AI is machine learning, which is where a program will identify patterns, learn from data and make decisions (or reach outputs).
AI is being used in some very interesting ways this World Cup - here are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
What’s becoming clear is that AI technology is becoming more and more mainstream, and that it has a number of interesting, far-reaching applications.
AI can be a useful tool for employers too – Littler’s most recent European Employer Survey found that of those employers that use AI as part of their HR processes, 69% do so in the recruitment and hiring processes, followed by a third who make use of AI in workforce automation. AI can be used across the whole lifecycle of employment from hiring to firing, for example:
Employers could choose to embrace the efficiencies this technology brings but should be mindful of the risks when implementing it (including discrimination, unfair dismissal risk and the risk of falling foul of data privacy requirements). Read more about this and our tips for employers in our article here.