Who Wins Raiders vs. Broncos? A.I. Predicts

There’s no doubt that the Oakland Raiders need to feel better about themselves after losing to the title-contending Los Angeles Rams during Week 1. Teams can’t afford to start with a loss in their home opener like Raiders did Monday night. Oakland traded All-Pro linebacker Khalil Mack, and it’s obvious there’s an issue replacing his presence on the field. Oakland head coach Jon Gruden needs to figure out a way to rejuvenate his locker room before things get worse.

Meanwhile, the Denver Broncos are feeling good after their Week 1 win. No one knows how good this team is, but many believe they’ve got what it takes to make the playoffs. Denver acquired quarterback Case Keenum to orchestrate a balancing offensive attack. Their defense was solid in week one, and they’ll look to contain Oakland’s quarterback Derek Carr from making plays in the pocket.

To predict the result of this Week 2 match-up, Unanimous A.I. used what’s known as swarm intelligence to forecast the week’s slate. A group of NFL experts 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.

Denver enters Sunday’s matchup as a six-point favorite against the Raiders, but the season’s only getting started. The hive-mind believes there’s still a chance that Oakland can turn things around this weekend, but their improvements won’t translate toward victory. The Raiders won’t have to be perfect on Sunday, but a even a slim victory in that tough environment seems highly unlikely. The Broncos have more talent than the Raiders, but a win isn’t fully guaranteed for them, either. Nevertheless, all colleagues picked Denver to prevail in the first AFC West contest of the year.

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.”

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