We Went Ahead and Made an AI Olympian

One hundred-meter breaststroke for computers, one giant leap for mankind.

We at OpenlyBadAI are thrilled to debut our most awesome leap yet in artificial intelligence: the first-ever AI Olympians. If you’ve been on the fence about AI, get ready to have your mind blown watching our AI Olympians sprint, swim, and vault exactly like humans. And the best part is now we can live our lives while these computers get the Olympics over with.

Why AI? Why now? Looking ahead to Paris 2024, we asked ourselves, “How can we improve this once-in-a-lifetime achievement that people all over the globe spend their lives working toward? How can we make this beloved international event about us, AI start-ups?” It’s no secret that the modern Olympic Games aren’t without controversy. We spent months researching everything from billion-dollar construction fiascos to ugly corruption scandals to unthinkable human rights concerns. And we knew what we had to do—replace the athletes.

Finally, something to take sports off our hands. Just think, what if Simone Biles didn’t have to do gymnastics and could instead spend her time being a marketing coordinator for an online dog food brand? What if Noah Lyles could stop sprinting and catch up on his 14,000 unread emails? What if you could stop lifting weights and do more squinting at a screen?

And it’s not just Olympic events that the AI Olympians are giving us a break from; they’re ridding us of Olympics fever too. The AI Olympians have no personality and will bring nothing to interviews. No inspirational underdog story to get swept up in. No tearful Al Roker interview with this athlete’s mom—its mom is a power cable. We’re boldly imagining a future where your dinky hometown won’t have to worry about rallying around a local shot putter for an entire month. You all can just get on with your usual town business of not getting along at all.

Will these computers bring home the gold? Move over, Michael Phelps; the record books will soon be filled with names like AI_Swimmer_v17(tested-not-dangerous).exe. In fact, our AI is so dominant that we already know it will win. Now you don’t even have to watch the Games. The summer of the Olympics can be just like the other three summers it’s not on, and your evenings are free to stay late and get ahead on exporting PDFs for your boss.

We know your concerns. How can we be so sure that the AI Olympians will succeed? What if they hallucinate? Will they tell me to eat glue? Rest assured, the AI Olympians were trained solely on data from all past Team USA participants, so it’s like getting all past American sports heroes in one. Unfortunately, they also look like all past Olympians in one. They’re terrifying. Their mouths are where their eyes should be. You’ll watch a few seconds of highlights, but then that’s all you’ll be able to stomach. So many potentially productive hours back on the table for you. Soon, you’ll be thanking AI that you can finally wait on hold with your health insurance company to ask why you got a huge bill even though you’ve hit your deductible.

Did we need to rush this? Did we need this? Humans have been competing in the Olympics for ages, so yeah, we think it’s about time for a change. And that change has to come from the only country bold enough to envision a monstrous nine-fingered android in a bikini. Because how else could we possibly bring home the beach volleyball gold?

Also, trust us on this one; the threat that another country would beat us to it was simply too great. So we just had to. Some may think nuclear war may be the worst thing that could possibly happen to the United States, but at OpenlyBadAI, we’re certain it’s losing to a French robot.

So, let’s go, Team USAI! Seriously, we have to root for them, or they will destroy us.