As families across the nation deal with the COVID-19 virus, NBA Math Hoops wants to ensure that children can still obtain valuable educational resources to further their studies.
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Math Hoops will also be sending games directly to families who have children out of school. “As a result of our current public health crisis, many students across the country will lose out on a significant number of hours in the classroom. Learn Fresh has reserved a limited number of NBA Math Hoops board games to donate directly to families, who may find that they have few adequate resources to keep their children engaged during this time.”
Madison Square Garden was among the companies named as a client of Clearview AI, a controversial tech company that provides a facial recognition tool that has raised alarms about privacy, in a BuzzFeed News report Thursday. MSG, however, denies that it is a client and says that it used Clearview as a test. The New York Times reports that Clearview is able to match up photos of people with images of them on the internet, allowing users to identify people with a high level of sophistication and speed. “We demoed the product last year and didn’t even move forward with a trial,” an MSG spokesperson said in a statement. Madison Square Garden does use facial recognition at the arena, as part of what it says is a number of security procedures.
The client list of Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition app being used by US law enforcement to identify suspects and other people, has been leaked. Its customers reportedly include not only law enforcement agencies like ICE and the Justice Department, but also companies like retail giant Macy’s and the NBA. BuzzFeed News’ Thursday report cited an internal document it obtained.
For a company that maintains its tools are for law enforcement, Clearview’s client list includes a startling number of private companies in industries like entertainment (Madison Square Garden and Eventbrite), gaming (Las Vegas Sands and Pechanga Resort Casino), sports (the NBA), fitness (Equinox), and even cryptocurrency (Coinbase). “While we conducted a limited test as we do with an array of potential vendors, we are not and have never been a client of this company,” an NBA spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.
On Friday at the NBA All-Star Tech Summit, the league unveiled NBA Global Scout, a mobile, AI-powered app that allows players from India to Indiana, China to Chi-town, Senegal to San Diego to record their measurements—such as wingspan, height, vertical leap, and agility—then build and show off their skills through development drills created to help NBA scouts evaluate their on-court proficiencies.
NBA chief innovation officer Amy Brooks says this is a tool to help democratize the process of trying to be an elite basketball player. “We see the possibilities here as essentially creating the LinkedIn for elite basketball,” says Brooks. “In the short term, it starts with profile and anthropometric and agility metrics. In the long term, there’s even more possibilities when it comes to game video from players, tracking data, highlights, and more, just aggregated profiles of complete basketball players.”
