Reed Shaffner: Football's AI moment - promise and pitfalls

Our guest on Episode #81 of the TGG Podcast is Reed Shaffner, Chief Technology Officer at Teamworks.

Reed oversees the engineering, design, product and data science teams behind a platform used across professional and collegiate sport.

In this Episode, Reed told us where AI is genuinely working in football and where it isn't; warned about the security and privacy risks some clubs are underestimating; and explained how Teamworks Player ID is learning to identify how good a player will become, versus how good they look today.

SHOW NOTES =>

0:00: Introduction

1:39: Reed's role at Teamworks, and his route in through gaming and youth sport

3:17: What AI actually is — beyond the buzzword

5:42: How widely is AI being used in football?

6:45: Where it works well, and where it doesn't

7:25: Injury prediction — why the returns are still questionable

8:24: Hallucinations, and the two athletes who didn't exist

10:20: Case study: the NFL's Digital Athlete platform