Sports + AI: It’s Getting Personal | Behshad Behzadi (CTO & Chief AI Officer, Sportradar)

CRAFTED. | The Tech Podcast for Founders, Makers, and Innovators

Sports, and the way we experience them, is changing. And AI, 5G, 3D, and all the other buzzy acronyms are why. Behshad Behzadi is the CTO and Chief AI Officer of Sportradar and on this episode of CRAFTED., we explore ways sports and technology are intersecting in novel, weird, and amazing ways.

Sportradar creates immersive experiences and data products for sports fans, players, leagues, and bettors.

Behshad joined after 17 years at Google where he co-founded Google Assistant, Google Lens and more. He's been building with AI and voice for way longer than most and has lots of practical advice on how to get the most out of AI.

Takeaways from this episode:

• AI enables incredibly precise levels of personalization — and that’s coming to a sports experience near you
• “GenAI is like a hammer…” but don’t use it like one. Traditional coding is often more effective, and you may want a mix of GenAI and old school code for different parts of the same problem
• You don’t always need the latest greatest GenAI models – save costs by using smaller models when you can
• To build moats, look to your data and customer relationships; less so to your GenAI models
• When adopting GenAI, corporations need good governance and oversight
• Google Assistant, which Behshad helped launch, promised too many things in its earliest versions, leading to user confusion
• Ignore the competition and focus on user needs (not easy when there is a race to dominate a market, as there was with the rise of Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa)
• Behshad says the “ultimate assistant” is coming within the next 20 years
• Behshad says AI will help cure many diseases in the next 20 years

Key Moments:

• (02:42) - Why this (AI) moment is so exciting in sports and beyond
• (04:04) - Personalizing the fan experience
• (06:09) - How GenAI can give you a competitive advantage (and where it won’t)
• (08:05) - How companies can succeed with GenAI, and pitfalls to avoid
• (10:48) - When to use GenAI and when to use old school coding
• (11:59) - midroll
• (13:10) - Adopting GenAI internally for writing code and more
• (16:06) - Building Google Assistant and early AI + voice products
• (18:09) - Why you should ignore the competition, and other hard moments from scaling Google Assistant
• (20:58) - Why Behshad believes “ultimate assistant” will soon be reality and many diseases will be cured thanks to the rise of AI
• (22:32) - Outro

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