Last week, Intel shared how its AI technology will be a significant part of the Olympics experience. If Intel pulls this off, it would be a huge boost to its AI efforts. If this doesn’t work, it will reflect poorly on Intel.
I’ve been involved with two prior Olympics tech efforts, one with IBM and the Winter Olympics and the other with Lenovo and the Summer Olympics.
While the Lenovo effort worked out reasonably well for Lenovo, the IBM effort was a train wreck that had little to do with IBM’s technology or services and everything to do with the complex nature of the Olympics held in the U.S. that year. France presents unique challenges given some venues’ locations, domestic and foreign efforts to disrupt the event, and the common committee approach to getting things done.
France also has a vastly different legal structure than much of Europe and the U.S., which can make doing a project like this uniquely difficult. However, if Intel succeeds, AI at the Olympics will make a huge difference to the attendee and athlete experience and make this the most enjoyable Olympics of all time. Though, given how new generative AI is and the complexity of this project, it won’t be a walk in the park.
Let’s discuss Intel, AI, and the Olympics. Then, I’ll close with my Product of the Week, a new Intel laptop from HP that pushes the envelope on sustainability, portability, and security.
Challenges Managing the Olympics With Technology
The Olympics is a frighteningly unique operation. It spans the world with many different and often unaligned organizations with varying connections to their own governments and only really comes together at scale every four years.
These groups have different cultural requirements and social protocols and speak different languages. During the interim time between events, people change, relationships between countries change, threats change, and the venue even changes. It is almost like building a large company from scratch over a very short time.
The first true test of whether most things will function at this scale is when the event goes live. As IBM found out, that is the wrong time to discover catastrophic problems with the implementation.
However, we’ve learned a lot since that IBM problem, and things have been going well with technology since then. However, unlike those prior events, two large wars are ongoing, which can lead to significant operational issues ranging from the ability to anticipate physical and electronic threats to politically motivated escalations intended to embarrass hosting or attending governments to the difficult-to-manage venues used for these games.
If the event goes badly, it likely won’t be Intel’s fault, though Intel will likely get the blame. If Intel is successful, it will be a massive showcase of Intel’s AI capabilities, capabilities that would seem to exceed where most think the company currently is. This success would have an extremely positive impact on the brand and its future.
The risk is in line with the reward, but neither is trivial.
AI Could Make a Unique Difference at the Olympics
As noted, Olympic gatherings include many people from different places, all arriving at one location that will be new to most of them, and both athletes and observers have to move efficiently between venues.
In addition, AI can provide attendees and athletes with direction to events they might be interested in that they otherwise wouldn’t have known about, suggestions on where to get help if they need it, and automated alerting for injuries or activities that would require Olympic or police response.
AI can provide suggestions about useful applications for attendees and athletes, locations for affordable and memorable dining and recreational experiences, and souvenirs and other things people can buy to remember the event. This can push the revenue side of this effort more effectively and result in less financial loss to the host country and businesses (the Olympics are rarely profitable).
If used properly, AI could restore profitability to this event, though I doubt that will be the case this year, given that this is the first real use of AI at the Olympics.
Prince Parfait