UNANIMOUS OFFERS PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE INTO THE FATE OF THE KNOWN WORLD

Last week, HBO announced that the 8th and final season of Game of Thrones will not be released until 2019, but the delay hasn’t stopped fans – or prediction markets – from trying to forecast how the epic series will end. The most pressing question is, of course, who will ultimately sit on the Iron Throne?, and it’s a testament to the quality of the series that are a number of legitimate contenders. PredictWise lists no fewer than 14 potential winners of the game of thrones, and a number of betting sites now allow fans to lay their money down on their favorite ( or least favorite ) characters.

With that in mind, researchers at Unanimous used Swarm AI® technology to generate insight into the final season of this beloved show. To answer the Iron Throne question and many more, Unanimous formed a group of dedicated Game of Thrones experts and used Swarm AI technology to tap into and amplify their collective intelligence. The result is an AI-powered peek into the most pressing questions looming in Season 8, using the same rigorous methodology Unanimous used to predict TIME’s Person of the Year, Trump’s Approval Rating and many other cultural milestones. Naturally, it’s impossible to offer this predictive intelligence without getting into spoilers, so please turn back now if you’re worried about that kind of thing.

No discussion of Game of Thrones can avoid the likelihood of main characters dying. Ever since the execution of Ned Stark in Season 1, the show has been infamously ruthless in killing off its most cherished and reviled with equal cruelty. So, before Unanimous researchers used their technology to forecast the winner of the game of thrones, it was imperative that they forecast who was least and most likely to survive the wars to come. This ranking was produced using the same process of elimination that empowered Unanimous to accurately predict the Kentucky Derby Superfecta, only now the researchers started by asking, “which major character is LEAST likely to survive Season 8?” 

In the replay above, each magnet represents an individual Game of Thrones expert, and the movement of the puck is the result of their collective wisdom, intelligence and intuition combined with AI algorithms. This process creates a Swarm AI system, which empowers regular people to solve complex, multivariable problems like the ones facing George RR Martin and the Game of Thrones screenwriters. So, while the creators have often defied viewer expectations, the insight produced by this group will likely be met with open arms by fans of the show, who have come to know Cersei Lannister as the greatest villain on a show with no shortage of challengers for the title.

Iterating on this crucial question allowed Unanimous to pare the list down to the two major characters who would be most likely to still be standing at the end of Season 8, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. This decision represents a true Sophie’s choice for fans of the show, so Unanimous used the High Confidence / Low Confidence methodology employed throughout the NFL season to allow the group to pick between them.

Given the unpredictability on display in the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones, forecasting that any character will survive Season 8 is almost certainly a Low Confidence affair, and the Swarm AI platform confirms this in the replay above. There are no easy predictions in a world as cruel – and sometimes random – as Westeros, but this group of GoT experts was able to converge on the optimized answer that, if anyone, Jon Snow is the most likely character to survive.

That insight leads directly into the final question of this first look at Season 8. Ever since Cersei Lannister set the stakes in Season 1 – “when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die” – the notions of survival and victory have been inextricably linked. So, when researchers asked the Game of Thrones Swarm to identify the winner of the Iron Throne, it is only logical that the answer would be the most likely person to survive.

Unanimous has used its Swarm AI platform to produce a full set of predictions for the final season of Game of Thrones. Stay tuned to this blog for the AI’s picks for the winner of the “Cleganebowl,” the next target on Arya’s hit list and more while you wait for Season 8 to be released.

Unanimous will be fielding swarms throughout 2018 to track the sentiment of the American public and to identify the trends and behaviors that are shaping our future.  If you would like to stay informed of our research, sign up below.

Want to learn more about our Swarm AI technology? Check out our TED talk below…