German football managers Jurgen Klopp is close friends with David Wagner. Klopp manages Liverpool FC and Wagner’s Huddersfield Town AFC face off for a third time in the last 12 months (one pre-season match and one regular season affair) on Tuesday. Klopp’s side won the pre-season match 2-0, and then the regular season match at Liverpool 3-0. They may be equals in life but Klopp has the upper-hand on the football pitch.
Will Wagner be able to turn it around on Tuesday?
Thirty-five Premier League enthusiasts, operating as a “hive mind” of sorts, have tipped Liverpool to win away in the battle of charismatic, fashionably bespectacled German managers. To predict the result of this and other matches, San Francisco-based technology firm Unanimous A.I. used what’s known as “swarm intelligence” to forecast this fixture.
Here’s how the AI-backed process — machine learning is used to “smooth out” decision making — works: Each participant controlled a little golden magnet and used it to drag the puck toward the answer they thought was the most likely outcome. In these exercises, when a user sees the puck move toward a particular outcome, it triggers a psychological response. The user readjusts their decision-making, and the group builds toward a consensus.
Here’s their prediction for the Terriers hosting Liverpool:
Liverpool by two goals is what the group of experts determined this week.
Here’s Unanimous A.I. founder Louis Rosenberg explaining swarm intelligence at a recent TEDx Talk:
Unanimous A.I. has made some scarily accurate predictions in the past using swarm intelligence, as our previous article explains. For instance, the swarm went a perfect 7-0 already this season in the English Premier League.
Huddersfield vs. Liverpool kicks off at 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.
