Cowboys vs. Falcons: Preview and Prediction for Dak vs. Matt Ryan
How does a hive-mind of 30 NFL experts see the Week 11 match-up turning out?
Both teams are 4-5, so this game is a battle to see who can claw back to .500. The Falcons started 1-4, in part due to a rash of injuries on the defensive side of the ball, but have since won three of their last four, excepting last week’s head-scratcher of a loss to the Cleveland Browns.
Meanwhile, the Cowboys were left for a dead a week ago before galloping into Philadelphia and grounding the defending world-champion Eagles last Sunday night, much to the chagrin of gamblers everywhere (including yours truly), who mistakenly saw in the floundering Boys an opportunity to make a quick buck. Somewhere, Jason Garrett is surely clapping, as the win means he will likely live to coach another week.
Them ‘Boys are a meager 1-4 on the road this season, but we sorely underestimated them last weekend (or made perhaps a graver mistake in relying on the 2018 Eagles to deliver in a big moment). With so much mediocrity on display in this game, it’s hard to pick a winner. We’ll go with Atlanta, who have at least shown the ability to string together successive victories this season – an achievement that Dallas has yet to prove that it’s capable of. Falcons 27, Cowboys 24 is my prediction, but how do a hive-mind of NFL experts see this one turning out?
To predict the result of this Week 11 match-up, Unanimous A.I. used what’s known as swarm intelligence. Some 30 NFL enthusiasts worked together as a hive mind to make their prediction. As you can see in the animation below, each participant controlled a golden magnet and used it to drag the puck toward the result they thought was the most likely outcome. This is where it gets interesting: As a user sees the puck move toward a particular decision, it triggers a psychological response. They might readjust their thinking as the group builds toward a consensus. It’s an artificial intelligence, produced by human brains, working together as a swarm.
As the animation below shows, the swarm has picked “Atlanta: Low Confidence” when asked to make a prediction about the winner of the Cowboys-Falcons game on Sunday.
The Cowboys play at the Falcons at 1 p.m. Eastern Sunday on CBS.
Here’s how Unanimous A.I. has predicted previous NFL games this season.
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:
