A choice you will face

by Trey Nosrac

“To rely on artificial intelligence, or not to rely – that is the question.”

Soon, Trey will sell a 3-year-old trotting racehorse and purchase a trotting yearling, the circle of life for many of us who enjoy the sport. I used my brain to reach my evaluations. I also submitted these two horses to Artificial Intelligence for evaluation. Our evaluations were different.

Would you listen to your gut or this new artificial intelligence entity? You will soon find yourself facing this question.

Many of you say, “That’s ridiculous, it doesn’t know the market.” Yes, it does. It knows almost everything the public knows, and learns more each minute of each day.

Like many of you, Trey has deeply mixed feelings concerning Artificial Intelligence; more than mixed feelings. I wish it weren’t the near-future. But it is. We can’t slow down the oncoming tidal wave. Here are a few random thoughts about my harness racing month with artificial intelligence as my guide.

The experiments did not go as smoothly as I had hoped. Much of the trouble was my fault. My technology ability is poor, my devices need updating, and paying for different levels of information made me nervous. I panicked when AI suggested compressing files, changing formats, uploading, downloading, and switching devices. A 12-year-old gamer would have flown where I stumbled.

There was a lapse of five days between the beginning of the experiment using AI and the arrival of the printed catalog. The comfort I felt receiving and holding that big book with yearling pedigrees was palpable. The physical catalog felt like a bond to a world I knew was slipping away. One afternoon, climbing into my car and seeing the catalog on the passenger seat, I spoke to the book and said, “Hope you hang around, pal.”

Addiction lurks in the AI world. Despite being vigilant, AI can morph into something that feels very human. It is easy to see where some users develop relationships with AI avatars. Free versions of AI give you a taste, but once you upgrade, your new fake friend will always be there, kind, supportive, constantly urging you to stick around, and always have suggestions to allow you to travel a new digital road.

Trey often felt as if he was losing control. Most of us want our hands on the reins, not to be spectators to a robot. The magic of harness racing is not just in the winning. It’s in picking the correct horse. It’s in seeing something others missed in the sales ring. Our infatuation comes from deep inside, not a spreadsheet. I want an assistant; I do not want a driver.

My nagging fear is that soon we will become AI users and AI non-users; AI technology could split the community. I see more division in our sport (and in our world).

For those of us who did not grow up in a high-tech world, a weird sensation you may wrestle with is a feeling that you are imposing. If I asked a person to “go through a sales catalog and adjust each race time from various-sized racetracks to one metric,” I would feel guilty about assigning such a mammoth task and would thank the person if they completed it. I kept feeling like I was overworking someone. It’s hard to get our minds around the concept that AI is not sentient (yet). It has no bottom – it hungers for information.

Many participants in our competitive sport will lean into AI lest they find themselves squeezed out. Rather than sorting, comparing, highlighting outliers, and running probabilities, they will ask AI to choose the horse, how to train it, and where to enter it. Gone will be the longtime friend you chat with, sitting in the barn, and the feeling that each horse is special.

What happens when someone links to an account with $25,000 and says, “Artie, here is my money, and here is the online auction phone number. You bid and buy the best trotting filly yearling.”

Indeed, there will be advantages such as AI race secretaries and hopefully AI drug testing. Treatment and diagnosis of equines will improve.

AI is more intelligent than we are, and the base of machine intelligence will continue to grow. However, a machine cannot duplicate the emotions, curiosity, and patience necessary for our sport. Only a human can choose the one worth rooting for. The problem is that economics can cause people to lose sight of that. If we use only data, the magic will get lost.

There is no sense in looking back. Howling into the wind about days of yore is a waste of breath. Artificial intelligence is here. It is real. It is dangerous, practical, and many other things. It is undoubtedly a looming force in our sport.