Don’t like the strike call? Take it up with the robot. | Photo by Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
Two years from now, in baseball stadiums around the US, the umpire behind home plate might be little more than a mouthpiece for a robot. Major League Baseball plans to introduce robot umpires in the 2024 season, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN this week. 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…
