MAY 16, 2024

F1 not ready to regulate use of AI

Formula 1 cannot yet intervene to regulate the teams' increasingly-powerful use of artificial intelligence technologies.

As the exploding and rapidly-improving power of AI sweeps the planet, top F1 teams have not been slow to begin to use it to improve their performance.

AI and machine learning are now helping the teams design their cars, develop race strategies, and make deep sense of the reams of sensor data collected while the cars are on track.

Teams are even believed to be using AI to analyse onboard footage of rival cars, according to Luca Bortolotti, a machine learning engineer at Ferrari.

If our competitor does the same corner at the same speed on the same line with slightly less of a steering angle, that tells us they probably have a more aggressive balance than us, he said, providing just one example.

Corriere dello Sport newspaper asked F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali if the sport needs to clamp down on AI so that the teams already deploying it are not getting a huge advantage over their rivals.

We already use artificial intelligence in our graphics, and the FIA uses it in active and passive safety systems, the Italian answered.

Now we have promised to understand how much it can influence performance, because we still don't know enough to intervene, Domenicali added.

(GMM)