It’s a trying time for my household: My husband insists on watching every World Cup game while my eyes glaze over. But while I don’t care about soccer, I’m fascinated by the astonishing amount of technology now used in every game. Each ball has a sensor that tracks touches; every stadium has cameras that collect over 150 million data points per game; and, according to The Athletic, each player is 3D-scanned to create an AI avatar, which helps referees reconstruct plays. I like to imagine it works like Sims 4 for sports.
But my favorite part about the World Cup is how artificial intelligence has a narrow and needed purpose: to make the calls in live games more accurate. Meanwhile, companies in other industries have raced to deploy AI tools en masse with decidedly mixed results. My column this week examines one such company: Politico, and its forays into artificial intelligence.
I’m Margaux MacColl and I’m filling in for Julia Black. Read on for my piece interviewing Politico’s CEO Goli Sheikholeslami about navigating a media company in the AI era.
Mentioned in this issue: Margaret Atwood, Madison Square Garden, Zappos, Tony Hsieh, Taylor Swift, Anduril, Saronic Technologies, Marc Andreessen, Love Island USA, Kalshi, ChatGPT, Mathias Döpfner, Axel Springer, Polymarket | 
