Science

Who Will Win 49ers vs. Vikings? AI Predicts

Will it be a ransacking?

by Kendall Lewis
Unsplash / Adam Dachis

Jimmy Garoppolo is undefeated as a starting quarterback for the 49ers, and his head coach Kyle Shanahan will look to give him freedom against Minnesota’s defense on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. On the opposite side of the ball, Kirk Cousins has been added to the Vikings offense. The addition of an elite player, one that Washington fans are sure to miss, should be the Vikings gain this season.

To predict the result of this Week 1 match-up, Unanimous A.I. used what’s known as swarm intelligence to forecast the week’s slate. About 50 NFL 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 swarm has low confidence that the Vikings will defeat the 49ers away.

It’s a close call, but the hive-mind of 34 NFL experts is 72 percent confident it has low confidence that Minnesota will win Week 1 at home. the 49ers play the Vikings at 1 p.m. Eastern on Sunday. The game is on Fox.

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.

In related news, Unanimous A.I. recently presented a scientific study of its ability to forecast games in the National Hockey League. In a 200-game, 20-week-long study of its Swarm AI in the NHL, it was able to easily outperform Las Vegas expectations, and its “Pick of the Week” was right 85 percent of the time, producing a 170 percent ROI. The paper, titled “Artificial Swarm Intelligence versus Vegas Betting Markets,” was presented at the at the IEEE Developments in eSystems Engineering Conference (DeSE 2018) this month at Downing College in Cambridge, England. In a press release issued with the study, co-author Gregg Wilcox says the technology can be applied to matters outside sports, too. “While it’s fun to predict sports, we are currently applying the same techniques to a wide variety of other domains, including financial forecasting, business forecasting, and medical diagnosis, all with positive results.”

Want to join the hive mind that picks NFL matches every week? Sign up to participate in future predictions

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