Shaun White says AI can help coaches and broadcasters, but should not replace the human experience

Aspen, CO —Shaun White said artificial intelligence could give coaches and broadcasters more information about an athlete’s performance, but understanding the sport and preserving its human element must still come first.

He described a sport that looked very different when he started. Early halfpipes were hand-dug with shovels, he said. Athletes filmed runs with camcorders, watched the footage later and tried to determine what went wrong.

Now, White said, AI tools can break down a run almost immediately. They can show speed, height, spin rate, trajectory and other details that athletes, coaches, broadcasters and judges can use.

“You can take it, put it into this tool, see how fast you’re going, how high you’re going, the velocity of the rate of the spin,” White said.

White said the tools can clarify what happened without replacing the experience of dropping into a run, feeling the wind and jumping through the air.

I asked White what students who are not athletes should learn if they want to enter sports as AI and data become more common.

White said the answer starts with understanding the sport itself.

“I think being able to understand the dynamics of the sport,” White said.

“This technology will only help people wanting to get into the broadcast, get into the coaching side of things,” he said.

For someone starting as a coach, White said, technology could help them support athletes even if they had not competed at an elite level.

“Imagine if you’re a coach, you’re starting out,” White said. “You love the sport. You didn’t really have the skills to cut it. Now you’re kind of in this industry. You want to be part of it. You can now use this technology to help your athletes help them get to the place that they want to go.”

Broadcasters could use the same data to explain a performance with more precision, White said. Instead of only telling viewers that a jump was big, they could describe an athlete’s speed, rotation or angle.

“If you’re a broadcaster, think of the information that you now have to talk about the sport,” White said.

White said the technology could also help casual viewers understand snowboarding tricks that are difficult to follow. He gave the example of a double McTwist 1260, which includes two flips and three rotations.

“It’s really bringing it down and breaking it down to a palatable level for people so they could understand the sport better,” White said.

White said AI could assist judges, but he opposed removing human judgment because style remains part of snowboarding. When an audience member asked whether too much data could hurt young athletes’ love of the sport, White said athletes would still have to decide which information helped them.

“We’re not trying to replace the human experience,” White said.