AI technology fails to predict World Cup
Most supercomputers predicted Germany would reach the 2018 World Cup Final, but the team failed to make it past the group stage.
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| Most AI systems predicted that Germany would not only get out of the group stage but also reach the final. |
According to Science Alert, an international team of researchers used an AI program to run 100,000 simulations and calculated that the German team has a higher probability of winning the championship than Brazil and second only to Spain. This artificial intelligence system believes that Germany will advance through the group stage but may face many difficult opponents in the next rounds.
The research team, which included scholars from the Dortmund University of Technology, the Munich University of Technology in Germany, and Ghent University in Belgium, used three techniques to process the data: Poisson regression (which interprets and evaluates many different variables), ranking methods (which evaluate the current strength of each team), and random forests.
Meanwhile, the AI of the multinational investment bank Goldman Sachs ran 200,000 simulations to predict scores, simulate scenarios and identify the teams that will be present in the semi-finals: France, Brazil, Portugal and Germany. Of which, Germany will advance to the final but lose to Brazil.
Similarly, San Francisco-based high-tech company Unanimous AI leveraged its AI algorithm to calculate the chances of winning the 32 teams in the world’s biggest football tournament. The four teams with the highest scores were Germany, followed by Brazil, Spain and France.
However, the Korean team caused a big surprise when they defeated Germany 2-0 in the final round of the group stage. The defending champion Germany had to pack their bags and go home early.
Animals have been chosen to "predict" the winning team for many seasons. This year, the use of artificial intelligence, supercomputers... to analyze big data and predict World Cup results suddenly appeared in a big way. However, AI still seems to be inferior to animals. For example, an elephant named Zella at a Stuttgart zoo (Germany) chose the option that the German team would be eliminated in the group stage of the 2018 World Cup after losing to South Korea.
