Robots are inventing new sports now

Each week, we spotlight a cool innovation recommended by some of the industry's top tech writers. This week's pick is an AI that's creating new sports.

A design firm used artificial intelligence to invent a new sport, said Anthony Ha at Tech ​Crunch. The digital agency, AKQA, which does work with Nike, fed data from about 400 different sports to a neural network with the question in mind, "Can we invent the next basketball or football?" The AI produced rules and concepts.

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Some of the computer's ideas "were simply not feasible," including a game where "players pass a ball back and forth while in hot air balloons." But another, dubbed Speedgate, has potential. It involves teams of six playing on a field with "large gates, passing and kicking the ball through the gates (but avoiding the center gate)." AKQA creative director Whitney Jenkins likens it to "the best of rugby, soccer, ultimate frisbee, and croquet."