This has been a rough week for artificial intelligence. An Anthropic official resigned after warning AI companies are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives” and others in the field shared his concern, including one official who places the odds of AI causing human extinction at 10 percent and a Nobel Prize winner known as the “Godfather of AI” who believes the threat is real.
And somehow that isn’t as troubling as the introduction of Duff Foreman, the first AI golf commentator who is calling the New Mexico Open next week.
You have questions, we have … concerns and existential dread and a need for a very strong drink. But we also have answers, each confined to a few sentences, even if grammatically those sentences become a disaster. Consider it a tribute to the larger AI disaster that may already be upon us.
I have a life. What is this all about?
Earlier this week the New Mexico Open announced that Duff Foreman, an “autonomous, conversational AI broadcast personality” will appear on screen and call the tournament live.
I’m sorry, did you say Duff Foreman?
Duff Foreman. Better yet, he is quoted in the press release. “This is exactly the kind of field I wanted for my first live tournament,” Foreman, ahem, said. “There are proven champions, young players trying to move up and very different styles of golf to analyze. My job is to help viewers understand what these players are seeing, why they’re making certain decisions and what the numbers tell us as the tournament unfolds.” If that answer strikes you as boring and painfully clichéd, congratulations, he already sounds like a veteran broadcaster.
How do we feel about the name?
I cannot decide whether it is intentionally or accidentally cringeworthy because it sounds like someone asked a chatbot to invent a golf announcer and rejected the first six suggestions for being too dignified only to give up on the seventh attempt. The creators will probably insist the cheesiness is part of the joke which only makes me angrier that we are discussing it.
Is Duff Foreman related to George Foreman or Red Forman?
My first thought, after “society is imploding,” was Duff Man from The Simpsons.
Who is to blame?
Duff was created by Gopher Hole Productions, an outfit with little digital footprint beyond a press release saying it developed him for golf coverage and “fictional extreme golf adventures.” I’m sure they’re fine people but spiritually they have delivered the golf equivalent of cyclospora.
Let me guess, Duff has a Scottish accent?
This is the best (worst) part as Duff does not appear to have one Scottish accent but several. In some clips he sounds freshly descended from the Highlands and in others the accent is barely detectable. Occasionally it disappears altogether. It is basically Jack Nicholson’s Boston accent in The Departed.
Will humans be working alongside him?
Notah Begay III and Ryan Burr will serve as Duff’s human chaperones. I’m hoping Burr dresses like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix just in case Foreman becomes self-aware.
Is Foreman scripted?
Apparently not, which feels like an important detail to have buried this deep in the press release. “Foreman will interact with Begay and Burr in real time, providing course strategy, player swing analysis, shot selection, the Rules of Golf and other aspects of play.” If this experiment includes Duff conducting a mid-round interview with a vanilla tournament sponsor CEO there’s a good chance we’re all involved in a Nathan Fielder prank.
Is the New Mexico Open a tour event?
No it’s a 54-hole state open. Matt Every, Sean O’Hair and Travis Vick are among the recognizable names in the field, and because I have exhausted the relevant information I will add Paul Stankowski won the event in 1992. I mention this because I once read a vignette from the 1997 Masters titled “Stankowski on the move” as though Tiger Woods was merely an intriguing subplot.
And chance he might be good?
Absolutely not.
Why do you say that?
On Twitter—Duff also has a Twitter account in case you feel the need to walk into the ocean—broke down Notah Begay’s swing and as my trusted colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen noted produced numbers that were impossible; according to Duff, Begay generated an ordinary swing speed and the ball speed of a 747.
Why are tournament organizers doing this?
We are talking about it so the strategy has already worked I suppose and people will tune in for the same reason they watch COPS, Bravo or a shopping cart roll unattended through a parking lot.
Where can I watch this?
Beginning Sept. 14 the broadcast will stream on fellow dystopian platform Facebook along with Instagram, YouTube and a dark-web marketplace where you can buy caddie bibs from the defunct 84 Lumber Classic.
Why are golf fans so upset about this?
Americans believe by a five-to-one margin that AI will do more harm than good and there is a growing resentment toward a technology that few people asked to have inserted into every corner of their lives promoted by those who speak of its takeover as inevitable even though it is not inevitable and we are all allowed to say no. Also, the analysis is terrible and his accent keeps changing but we covered those parts.
Do you consider Duff a member of the golf media?
Not until he receives a cease-and-desist letter from Patrick Reed.
Is there any silver lining to this?
Duff gets us closer to our ability to produce a hologram of Verne Lundquist who follows you around the course and says “Oh my” after you or your friends sail a drive into the woods then takes a long sip of Johnnie Walker Black. We will accept this use of artificial intelligence without objection.
How did LIV not try this?
They already had programmed androids in Arlo White and David Feherty.
Aren’t you just cynical because AI is eventually going to take your job?
I have always viewed journalism as a public service and writing as an act of human expression, that readers deserve to know there is a person behind the words who is exercising judgment, drawing from experience and accepting responsibility for what appears under their name. We already struggle to understand one another and handing the ways we communicate and explain the world and make sense of ourselves to machines will only widen that distance so whatever path remains requires greater faith in our shared humanity than we currently seem capable of showing.
In short … yes, I’m screwed. After spending this long thinking about Duff Foreman I suspect the rest of you are too.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
