Who Wins 49ers at Chiefs? A.I. Predicts
If Jimmy G is going to have a breakout game, it may be in Week 3.
If there’s one QB matchup to watch this weekend, it’s happening in Kansas City. The Chiefs enter Week 3 with the league’s most explosive offense, it’s most exciting young QB in Patrick Mahomes, and the spread has them favored by a touchdown. At home and against a 49ers team that’s struggling a bit offensively, this is a pretty safe spread for Vegas.
The 49ers have a great young talent in Jimmy Garoppolo. Don’t forget that before Mahomes and his rocket arm lit the league on fire through the first two weeks, it was handsome Jimmy G who was set to be the heir apparent to the throne of the league’s best QB.
To predict the result of this Week 3 match-up, Unanimous A.I. used what’s known as swarm intelligence to forecast the week’s slate. About 40 NFL enthusiasts 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 decision, it triggered a psychological response. They readjusted their decision-making, building toward the consensus you see below.
The swarm is picking the Chiefs straight-up but is giving the 49ers a chance to cover. The reason for this is despite some of the 49ers offensive struggles (they are 26th in passing yards and 17th in points scored), they are going up against a Kansas City defense that ranks dead-last in passing yards and total yards per game. If Jimmy G is going to have a breakout game, it’s going to be against a suspect Chiefs defense.
The 49ers play the Chiefs at 1 p.m. Eastern Sunday on Fox.
Unanimous A.I. has made some scarily accurate predictions in the past using swarm intelligence, as our this 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
