Swarm AI Correctly Predicts Kentucky Derby Superfecta, Turns $20 Into $11,000 (yahoo.com)

New "Swarm Intelligence" platform UNU from Unanimous A.I. made a bet on the Kentucky Derby this weekend and won big. The bet is called the Superfecta and it paid 540 to 1 odds. "Swarm Intelligence" allows groups to amplify their collective IQ beyond the capacity of individuals, something that the human species hasn't been able to do because of evolutionary restraints. Silicon Valley startup Unanimous A.I. set out to answer one question: Can humans swarm, and if so can we amplify our intelligence beyond the ability of individuals? Spoiler: yes we can. According to Yahoo, "Unanimous spent the last two years building a swarm intelligence platform called UNU that enables groups to get together as online swarms -- combing their thoughts, opinions, and intuitions in real-time to answer questions, make predictions, reach decisions, and even play games as a unified collective intelligence." Already, UNU has predicted the Oscars better than experts, and predicted the NCAA college bowl games with 70% accuracy. As for the Kentucky Derby, Hope Reese, reporter for Tech Republic and the Atlantic, challenged Unanimous A.I. to use UNU to predict the winners. The group used UNU to answer questions as a unified Swarm Intelligence, narrowing the field of 20 horses down to four winners. Then it was asked to order the winners into Win, Place, Show, and Fourth. Swarm Intelligence convened again a week later after the Derby announced the post positions of the horses -- one of the four picks was replaced by an alternate.

Comments

Reading between the lines

[mwvdlee]

How many other bets did they place on the Kentucky Derby?

Re:Reading between the lines

[Cortexia]

That's the amazing thing... They placed ONE BET and it was done in response to a challenge by a reporter at TECH REPUBLIC, who published their pick in advance - ONE PICK. This is the article that Tech Republic published 2 days before the race: http://www.techrepublic.com/ar...

odds are collective intelligence already

[sittingnut]

bookmakers create and change odds based on the bets being placed, so that they themselves will not take any loses. that is odds are themselves the predictions of all who have paced bets. iow it is a form of collective intelligence.

whole concept of predictive markets is based on harnessing the collective intelligence/information of those who are willing to take risk on a event outcome ,to predict probability of various out comes of events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

how is this so called "swarm intelligence" different?

Bro, Do You Even Bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on your "common sense" assertion, everyone should win at the track every time by simply using common sense.

As it turns out, most people lose, most of the time. Why do you suppose that is?

Superperfecta in a 20 horse race is 116,000:1 It's very rare that anyone wins the superperfecta. But, by your assessment, it's common sense to be able to pick the winner. I'm guessing you're a very wealthy man?

Re:Bro, Do You Even Bet?

[bws111]

The odds of winning the Superfecta are certainly not 116,000:1. If that were the actual odds anyone would be insane to place such a bet when the payout is only $542. Those odds would be true ONLY if it were equally likely for every hose to finish in any given position. Clearly that is not true, or this AI would not have 'picked' a winner, it would just have gotten lucky with a RNG.

I don't know what the Superfecta pool was, but it was probably at least a half a million, so there are probably around 1000 other winners just for this race.

This program picked ONE horse race winner (so far). A whole lot of people can pick ONE winner (especially when picking favorites, which is what this did), but it is rare to be able to CONSISTENTLY do that, which is why most people lose.

Re:Bro, Do You Even Bet?

[rockout]

Everyone is missing the fact that the top four horses to finish were 2-1, 5-1, 10-1, and 12-1, respectively, before the race. They were the four lowest-payout (or likeliest to win, however you want to look at it) horses in the field. Yes, you could pick the top four favorites in every race to finish 1, 2, 3, 4 in that order every time (and I suspect this fake AI would do exactly that, a lot). The crazy thing is that in this Kentucky Derby, that's exactly how the top four came in. That's extremely rare.

Also, 540-1 for a superfecta payout is really low - again, due to the fact that the four favorites came in, in order. Make this same bet on every race and over time, you would lose money just like everybody else.