Elevate Arena is underway at London's Excel and the hot topic of AI was the first point of discussion on the Debate stage.

Chaired by Melinda Nicci, founder of Bella AI and digital lead at UK Active, the panel was made up of Tiffeny Gould, consultant director at Leisure Labs; Jessie Shanahan, CTO at Vor Technologies as well as Suzanne Gabb, COO Good Boost – a social enterprise which provides a good example of AI being used in the industry to support with people with MSK issues via personalised digital programmes. 

A poll of the audience uncovered the fact that there’s still some overwhelm and fear with AI, especially around trust and authenticity.

The conversation revolved around the potential of AI – for example to automate daily tasks, do the grunt work and the research – as well as its limitations, including it being constrained by historical data which may not accurately predict future scenarios – there is also a gap in data about women and older demographics. 

Gould says the industry is currently collecting vast amounts of data without effectively using it for business insights. The panel stressed the importance of identifying the problem and working backwards to establish how AI could be leveraged.

Shanahan also raised the crucial point of keeping the human in the loop to avoid skill decay – if we outsource decision making or critical analysis then we will get worse at it. “No AI model even comes close to humans in making decisions,” she says. “It’s important not to blindly accept what the computer says. It’s tool that has been designed to sound convincing, but not always be accurate.”

The key takeaway was that it should augment human work, not replace it. The fitness sector is driven by relationships and trust is created by having a person involved.

“AI is part of the conversation but not the whole,” says Gould. “Take a step into the world and give it a go, don’t be perfectionist. You have to experiment and try, iterate and change it and it gets better as a consequence.”