Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight.
Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight. Photo: GeekWire.

BOSTON — Will umpires and referees be replaced by robots one day?

Nate Silver says it’s possible.

The well-known statistician and founder of FiveThirtyEight spoke at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on Saturday and was asked if technology will be relied upon for judgment decisions traditionally made by humans.

“I think it will take a while, then happen very fast,” Silver said.

Silver said it won’t happen in every sport, noting that it would be tricky for a computer to call a penalty during a hockey game, for example.

But he pointed to baseball, where a computer might be more accurate than umpires when calling balls and strikes. Silver said technology would fix the issue of pitch framing, which is when catchers try to strategically move their glove to make pitches look like strikes.

He noted that if data showed how pitch framing was swinging 5-to-10 wins per year, people would want balls and strikes to be called automatically by a robot.

“All the evidence on pitch framing, that’s a really big advertisement against how objective umpires are,” Silver said.

Silver also talked about trying to predict the 2016 presidential election, noting that “this election is a good illustration of why sports is easier to forecast than politics” given Donald Trump’s somewhat unexpected rise in popularity among voters.

He said that despite Bernie Sanders upsetting Hilary Clinton in the Michigan primary — which Silver called “one of the greatest polling errors in primary history” — Clinton is still “very likely” to be the democratic nominee.

“I’d put Bernie at 20-to-1,” Silver added.

As for Trump, Silver said it isn’t likely he wins the general election if nominated as the republican candidate.

“On the one hand, there is the line of thought that Trump has defied so many predictions so far that you better not count him out in the general election — that kind of makes sense, but I think it’s a little oversimplified,” Silver said. “On the other hand, he is incredibly unpopular with the vast majority of Americans — the end. I feel like a broken record saying this, but he does not have a silent majority — he has a noisy minority of one party.”

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