Major League Baseball plans to introduce robot umpires in the 2024 season, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN this week. The Verge reports: He framed the change as a way to speed up games, but anyone who’s watched baseball the last few years will tell you that a machine would almost certainly call balls and strikes better than the humans do. There are two ways the “Automated Ball-Strike System,” which is the technical term for these robot umpires, might be implemented. One is the fully automated version, in which the AI-powered system calls every pitch a ball or a strike and relays the call to the umpire. Or the MLB could decide to use the AI as a review system, like VAR in soccer or the Hawk-Eye system used in professional tennis: each side gets a certain number of challenges, which are then adjudicated by the automated system.

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Source: Slashdot – Robot Umpires Could Be Coming To MLB In 2024