Studying trust in AI in sports: An interdisciplinary primer

The increasing use of AI in daily life has not only changed society, but also research on AI. The focus has broadened from methods and problem-solving ability towards consideration of legal, ethical or psychological aspects, investigating how AI is perceived, used and affects human behaviour. Rapid developments in AI technology and conflicting theories on the extent of human trust in AI-based decision aid have made trust in AI a much-discussed topic. Inspired by the increasing importance of AI-tools in sports and the role of sports as a well-established environment to study psychological phenomena, we review the current state of research on trust in AI in sports. Moreover, drawing on existing research from other domains, we explore the potential of sport to expand our theoretical understanding of trust in AI. Through a literature search, we find that sport has been mainly ignored in the literature so far. At the same time, reviews from other domains have highlighted open research questions, for which sports would be the predetermined research environment. We particularly identify sports as a domain where behavioural measures are easy to assess, where field studies are possible, where reliable and objective skill assessments exist and with high availability of individual-level data. This article intends to serve sports psychologists as a starting point to assess existing evidence in this large, interdisciplinary and rapidly growing research field and to stimulate more studies on trust in AI in sports.