When I finally had a chance to speak, we were already running over the 2 1/2 hours allotted for the roundtable, so I was only able to
briefly touch on two of my many message points: one, that the game can be and is being made safer, and two, that, based
on my experience following a high school football team in Oklahoma this past season - which will be the subject of a MomsTEAM documentary to be released in
early 2013 called The Smartest Team - I saw the use of hit sensors in football helmets as offering an exciting technological «end around» the problem of chronic under - reporting of concussions that continues to plague the sport and remains a major impediment, in my view, to keeping kids safe (the reasons: if an athlete is allowed to keep playing with a concussion, studies show that their recovery is likely to take longer, and they are at increased risk of long - term problems (e.g.
early dementia, depression, more rapid aging of the brain, and in rare cases, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and in extremely rare instances, catastrophic injury or death.)
I've
touched on this topic in an
earlier post called, «Robots, Law, Regulation: ««Unfortunately It's Not a Conversation That's Happening Anywhere...»» In that post I
briefly highlighted an observation that Ed Walters * made when talking about the law of robotics, namely: Who makes or monitors the algorithmic decisions embedded in autonomous systems?