FAIR Freediving: Clean Sport, Public Suspicion, and the Dystopian Dream of the AI Lie Detector

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Anthony Feoutis

AIDA & Molchanovs Instructor Trainer

He is the founder of The Depth Collector and VD Freediving Taiwan. With over a decade of experience, he focuses on solving real-world freediving problems, from equalization to depth adaptation, using practical, field-tested methods.

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FAIR Freediving: The Dive to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

Let’s get one thing straight: I do not support doping or cheating.

Freediving needs to treat performance-enhancing drugs like the threat they are and deal with proven violations directly, with no excuses.

Competitive freediving needs integrity. Athletes need to know that when they stand on the platform, the person next to them is playing by the same rules. Without that trust, competition becomes theatre. Records become suspicious, performances are questioned, and the community starts whispering, or worse, attacking athletes from behind a keyboard before any official sanction has been made.

And yes, that is already happening.

When I look at recent controversies in freediving, from questions about safety protocols and access to decompression chambers to allegations and luggage searches that raised serious due-process concerns, it is hard not to feel that the sport is facing more than a doping problem.

It is facing a governance problem.

The issues are real. Freediving is growing. It has mind-blowing world records, sponsors, national teams, federations, media attention, and reputations built around performance. Where there is performance, money, and visibility, people will look for shortcuts. That has always been part of competitive sport, and freediving is not magically immune.

After all, we are talking about a sport where one meter can separate a champion from everyone else. And with that meter can come a huge difference in opportunity: one athlete may land a serious sponsorship deal, while another, just behind, may receive free gear and be expected to promote it every day on social media.

Clean athletes should not feel foolish for respecting the rules, and nobody should feel that cheating is the only way to survive at the top.

But a real problem does not automatically make every proposed solution healthy.

Even if the perfect solution exists somewhere, we are not going to find it by clapping for every new idea because it wears the costume of integrity. We find it by arguing, questioning, pushing back, and refusing to treat criticism like betrayal.

So let’s talk about the Freediving Athlete Integrity Regulation, or FAIR.

I am not going to sugarcoat it: I am deeply uncomfortable with the concept of FAIR Freediving, and this article is my attempt to explain why.

However, I also want to say this clearly: I respect the fact that people care enough about freediving to put serious thought, time, and energy into protecting it. That matters. The intention is not the enemy here.

After carefully reading the FAIR method, I do not think we are simply looking at a stronger anti-doping proposal.

We are looking at something much bigger, and much stranger.

As I understand it from the material available to me, FAIR asks athletes to record video testimonies and place them into an archive for future use. In those videos, athletes would declare that they have not used performance-enhancing drugs or other pharmaceuticals for competitive advantage.

But those videos are not only meant to exist as statements.

They are meant to wait.

One day, when technology has supposedly advanced enough to separate truth from lies, they may be analyzed by an AI lie-detection system.

That alone should make us pause.

No, seriously. Stop for a second.

For this system to work without damaging the sport, an AI lie detector would need to be so accurate, so certain, and so trusted that its judgment could be treated as definitive. It would need to be accepted by athletes, organizers, federations, and the public without creating more debate, more suspicion, or more fractures inside the freediving community.

A technology capable of reading human honesty with that level of certainty would be used in courtrooms, police stations, airports, job interviews, insurance claims, border control, politics, and probably every ugly corner of human power.

Nah. I do not buy it.

So while we wait for this perfect technology, a technology that may never arrive, what does FAIR actually achieve today?

It appears to create a visible divide between athletes who participate in its integrity program and athletes who do not.

And that matters. A lot.

Because it risks making non-participation look suspicious by design.

The FAIR website says that top-10 athletes in each discipline may be shown with portrait thumbnails in colour if they have recorded a video, and in grayscale if they have not.

That visual difference turns participation into a public signal, and non-participation into something that stands out. In practice, that can create pressure to take part, not because the system has proven anything. It literally has not. But because opting out might already look like there is something to hide.

And then what?

Well, FAIR will ask the athlete for new recordings every two years. But why not every few months? Before every competition?

Unless the next step is asking the machine to read future intentions too.

Oh no, sorry.

That is Minority Report.

So the logic does not stop. It could expand.

More declarations. More archives. More pressure to perform innocence.

If that is not dystopian, I do not know what is.

This is where I take serious issue: I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that fairness can be achieved by replacing due process with surveillance, and by asking athletes to sacrifice privacy in exchange for perceived credibility.

Testing Is Not Testimony

A proper anti-doping system is built around known procedures: rules, sample collection, chain of custody, accredited laboratories, thresholds, hearings, appeals, and limits.

It is not perfect. Freediving is such a particular sport that it may be impossible to test for every pill, drug, supplement, or pharmaceutical strategy that could potentially enhance performance. The system can be slow, expensive, frustrating, and incomplete.

But at least it asks a clear question: did this athlete violate a rule under the anti-doping code?

That code is supposed to be based on evidence: scientific studies, defined substances, known effects, and a credible link between a substance and performance enhancement in a specific sport.

So yes, I know freediving is a niche sport, and if I really force myself, I could understand why the people behind FAIR may feel frustrated with the limits of the existing system.

But frustration can push people toward shortcuts, and shortcuts are dangerous.

And what exactly is AI lie detection in this context?

A shortcut around laboratories, blood, urine, thresholds, chain of custody, and scientific evidence.

The FAIR argument suggests that artificial intelligence may soon be able to distinguish truth from lies through video and audio analysis.

Oulala!!! It sounds scientific. But is it?

Heart rate, breathing, eye movement, voice tension, facial expression, and body language can reveal many things: fear, fatigue, shame, confusion, embarrassment, cognitive load, or anxiety. None of them magically reveal guilt.

Of course, the promise is that a future machine will be able to separate nervousness from deception, stress from dishonesty, and camera shyness from guilt.

But that is a massive promise.

Of course, they say: “Do not worry, it will only be used when the technology is ready.”

Well, forgive me if I do not find that reassuring.

Technology has a long history of being deployed before it is fully understood, before it is fair, and before the people affected by it have any real power to challenge it.

The machine is never alone. Someone uploads the file. And where humans are involved, human problems follow: bias, rivalry, jealousy, ambition, politics, revenge, and even good intentions that still distort judgment.

So how can we be completely sure that bias will be avoided? Freediving has already seen recent examples of personal conflict, public accusation, and questionable governance. Why should we assume those tensions will magically disappear?

I believe that the idea that a machine could one day decode the complexity of human honesty is profoundly misguided.

And I am surprised by the blind confidence some people already seem ready to place in it.

No Reasonable Objection?

Perhaps the most troubling part of the FAIR method is not even the technological fantasy.

It is the claim that, because there is no cost, drawback, or barrier to joining FAIR and recording a video testimony, there can be no reasonable objection to doing so unless an athlete has something to hide.

Well...

There are many reasonable objections.

An athlete may distrust the archive, the consent process, the technology, the organization, or the people controlling the data. They may not want their testimony stored for future AI analysis, judged by unknown standards, or used later in ways they cannot predict.

That does not make them guilty.

I do not want my DNA stored in some database either. Does that make me a criminal? Of course not. It means I understand that privacy matters, that consent matters, and that refusing to hand over personal data is not the same thing as hiding a crime.

The same logic applies here.

When a system says, “Join us voluntarily, but if you do not, people may wonder why,” it is not really voluntary.

That is not freedom. That is soft coercion.

And no, the absence of consent is not proof of guilt.

The Appeal Problem

There’s another problem baked into the FAIR method: if a future AI analysis gives a questionable result, the athlete can appeal.

But hold on. If the machine is supposed to reveal the truth without doubt, why is an appeal even necessary?

The fact that an appeal exists already tells you something: the result might be wrong, incomplete, or open to interpretation.

And what does that appeal look like? The athlete has to provide more material, more detailed video testimony, more interviews.

That’s not a fair appeal.

That’s just going deeper into the same system.

If a machine judges you, and the only way to challenge it is to feed it more of yourself, then the appeal process is already broken.

A real appeal needs independence and transparency. It needs clear standards, access to evidence, human review, defined limits, and the ability to question the method itself.

It can’t just mean: sit down again, talk again, expose yourself again, and let the machine take another pass at you.

That’s not due process.

That’s a loop.

Now imagine the machine decides you are a little piece of cheat.

You appeal.

Great.

And even if no traditional anti-doping test ever found anything, the stain is already there.

Good luck washing that off.

The Problem With Retroactive Morality

FAIR also appears to go beyond the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) list. It does not only ask whether an athlete has used banned substances. It also extends to what the FAIR website calls “the unethical use of prescription or legal substances for performance gain, which contravenes the spirit of fair play.”

This sounds principled.

But it is also dangerously vague.

What counts as performance gain? Something that might help, but is not scientifically proven? Something that may or may not help, depending on the individual?

If a substance is legal, prescribed, or not banned, and its performance benefit is uncertain, then what exactly is the athlete confessing to? That they had the wrong thought? That they carried the hidden intention of a cheater?

At that point, is FAIR searching for integrity, or purity?

Because those are not the same thing.

Integrity requires rules, evidence, and due process.

Purity relies on moral judgment, and then someone gets to decide what is morally acceptable.

But I guess FAPR, the Freediving Athlete Purity Regulation, was less catchy.

A rule must be clear before it can be fairly enforced. Athletes need to know what is prohibited before they compete. If a substance is not banned at the time, and its performance benefit has not been established, then retroactively treating its use as a violation becomes extremely unstable.

Of course, ethics matter. Fairness, honesty, health, and respect for competitors matter. But ethics cannot replace clear rules.

Ethics cannot become a vague moral fog where athletes are judged later by standards that were never properly defined.

The Real Enemy Is Not Only Doping

Doping is a problem. But it is often a symptom of something deeper: the worship of performance.

In an ideal world, freediving would celebrate beauty of movement, control, efficiency, technique, and restraint. The quiet mastery of a dive done well. The elegance of a descent that looks effortless because it is built on discipline and understanding.

But we do not live in that world.

We live in a culture that rewards visibility, numbers, records, sponsorships, national prestige, and social media attention. Depth is easier to compare than style.

And when performance becomes the center, risk-taking follows.

So yes, we need anti-doping.

But anti-doping alone will not save freediving.

You can have clean tests and still have reckless values. You can have legal performances that are still disconnected from the spirit of the sport.

You can invent all the tests you want. You can invite technology, algorithms, cameras, biometric analysis, or the Truthsayer from Dune. People who truly want to cheat, people who carry that logic inside them, will always look for a way around the system.

And where does that logic stop?

Do we start asking coaches to record video testimonies too? After all, maybe they slipped an “unethical but still legal performance-enhancing substance” into an athlete’s drink without the athlete knowing.

And then what about training partners? A husband? A wife?

Once suspicion becomes the engine of the system, the circle keeps expanding. The athlete is no longer the only person under pressure. Everyone around them can become part of the story, part of the doubt, part of the archive.

That is the problem with systems built on suspicion.

They do not know where to stop.

Final Thought

The real question is what kind of fairness we want.

Do we want fairness built on evidence, process, and responsibility, or fairness built on suspicion and public marking?

Do we want anti-doping that protects the sport, or anti-doping that slowly turns every athlete into a potential criminal?

Do we want technology as a tool, or technology as an oracle?

Freediving is not beautiful because humans go deep.

Machines can go deeper.

Freediving is beautiful because a human being descends with one breath, discipline, restraint, honesty, and control, then returns to the surface still whole.

That is the magic.

That is the meaning.

That is what must be protected.

So yes, protect freediving from doping and cheating.

But also protect it from paranoia, rumor, technological arrogance, public marking systems, retroactive machine judgment, and the fantasy that a machine can read the truth of a human being.

The cleanest sport is not the sport where everyone is constantly watched.

The cleanest sport is the sport where the culture itself makes cheating unnecessary, shameful, and stupid.

That is harder to build.

But that is the only version worth fighting for.