First-year coach Kevin Keatts has North Carolina State back in the NCAA tournament, getting victories over the elite likes of North Carolina, Duke, and Arizona.
With that kind of resume, can the ninth-seeded Wolfpack beat the eight-seed Seton Hall Pirates, which has managed its own big wins to accompany some truly putrid losses? A hive mind of college basketball fans has a prediction for who will emerge victorious.
To predict the result of this and other games, Unanimous A.I. used what’s known as swarm intelligence to forecast the week’s slate. About 50 college basketball fans worked together as a hive mind to make picks. As you can see in the animation below, each participant controlled a little golden magnet and used it to drag the puck toward the answer they thought was the most likely outcome. As the users saw the puck move toward a particular outcome, it triggers a psychological response. They readjust their decision-making, building toward a consensus.
The hive mind expects the Wolfpack to upset the Seton Hall Pirates, though only with low confidence. The swarm gives an edge to NC State with 76 percent of its collective brainpower, so there’s still a chance that Seton Hall will come out on top.
Read more from Inverse: The Perfect NCAA Bracket Is A.I.’s Biggest Sports Challenge Yet
Unanimous A.I. has made some scarily accurate predictions in the past using swarm intelligence, as our previous article explains. For instance, the swarm picked this year’s Oscar winners with 94 percent accuracy. Here’s Unanimous A.I. founder Louis Rosenberg explaining swarm intelligence at a recent TEDx Talk.
The game tips off Thursday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern in Wichita, Kansas on TBS
