Dilemmas of Legitimacy and Responses to the Artificial Intelligence of Sports Refereeing

With the rise and development of artificial intelligence technology in the field of sports, represented by big data and machine learning, the artificial intelligence of sports refereeing has gradually become a trend, and machines have begun to partially replace humans in making decisions. The research is based on a combination of literature and logical analysis and reflects on the trend of artificial intelligence in sports refereeing from the perspective of legitimacy. The study concludes that the artificial intelligence of sports refereeing suffers from the lack of subject status, subject ability and subject responsibility in terms of subject legitimacy, the dilemma of insufficient data infrastructure and dynamic innovation in terms of means legitimacy, the problem of weakened informed and personal procedures in terms of procedural legitimacy, and the paradox of consistency, objectivity and efficiency of results in terms of results legitimacy. As a result, artificial intelligence in sports refereeing can only be an auxiliary tool at present, and its role as a “good thing” still depends on the definition of the scope of application, the optimisation of refereeing data and algorithms, the adaptation of due process, and the control of refereeing results.