Science

Who Wins Cowboys at Seahawks? A.I. Predicts

The Cowboys will need Ezekiel Elliott to be great again this weekend.

by Michael Cahill
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Georgia} Leslie Plaza Johnson/Icon Sports

Just how far have the Seahawks fallen from their Legion of Boom days? Well, for starters, they rank in the bottom third of the league in points allowed, yards allowed, passing yards allowed and rushing yards allowed. Their Week 2 performance against Chicago was only tamed by the Bears inability to convert opportunities into TD’s.

The Cowboys scored a much needed win against the Giants in Week 2 but they are far from out of the woods. They rank 29th in points per game and 30th in both total yards and passing yards. If it weren’t for the consistent performance of Ezekiel Elliott the Cowboys would be hopeless. Both teams need a win badly.

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 A.I Swarm feels like Dallas has the slight edge here. Some of this could be that Russell Wilson’s offensive line is going to be bad enough to make the Cowboys defense look good. Either way, it’s a tough bet but the smartest experts at A.I believe the Cowboys should get a win in Seattle.

The Cowboys play the Seahawks at 4:25 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

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