Who Will Win Vikings vs. Packers? A.I. Predicts

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers should play in Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, despite an carrying an injury in his left knee. The Vikings may look to take advantage of Rodgers’ limited mobility out of the pocket, just as the Chicago Bears did during Week 1. How well Rogers negotiates the situation could be the difference-maker in Week 2.

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 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.

Perhaps taking into account Rodgers’ knee trouble, a swarm of 27 NFL experts came to the consensus that the Minnesota Vikings will defeat the Green Bay Packers during this Week 2 match-up, but their not as confident about it as they might be — with only 69 percent “brainpower” believing the Vikings will win Sunday.

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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