A key decision still faces Donald Trump – his pick for Secretary of State. Some media outlets are reporting that the President-elect has narrowed his choices to four candidates, General David Petraeus and Senator Bob Corker ( TN ), as well as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Governor Mitt Romney. Others believe that John Kelly and John Bolton are still in the running.
Who will Trump choose? Rather than guessing at the intentions of a very unpredictable man, researchers at Unanimous AI asked a Swarm Intelligence to weigh in. Using UNU, mix of computational algorithms and real input from real people in real time, the swarm was asked to rank the field of candidates down, from the least likely to win to the most. This is the same process that allowed Unanimous A.I. to correctly predict the Kentucky Derby Superfecta. While no one in this field of six is a 541-1 longshot, it is fascinating to see which candidates the swarm considers more and less likely:
As you can see, of the six candidates, General David Petraeus is considered to be the least likely to be named Secretary of State. This is an interesting result, because many believe that Petraeus will be one of the four finalists for the job. However, since the time this Swarm made its prediction late Thursday night, Trump’s team has announced that it will be supporting General James “Mad Dog” Mattis for Secretary of Defense, a move that is complicated by the fact that Mattis has not been retired long enough to be eligible. Perhaps the Swarm is reacting to the notion that two former Generals in the cabinet is too many and would disrupt the delicate balance of power the government desires?
This chart showing the evolution of the Swarm’s decision over time reveals two interesting details. First, as you can see, General Petraeus was not the overwhelming favorite at the outset, but the Swarm converged on him via virtual negotiation that siphoned support from other candidates like John Kelly and Bob Corker. Second, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani received almost no support as the least likely candidate to win the position.
The Swarm continued to narrow down the list from six all the way down to two candidates. In order of least likely to most, the Swarm’s predictions were: the aforementioned General Petraeus, Senator Bob Corker, John Bolton and then John Kelly. The final two candidates are former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor Mitt Romney.
Here the Swarm very quickly builds consensus on Rudy Giuliani as the less-likely pick for Trump’s cabinet. That means that Mitt Romney is the Swarm’s prediction for Trumps’ Secretary of State, despite the fact that some insiders are calling that Romney’s selection would be a “betrayal” of Trump’s supporters, since the Mormon governor was such an outspoken critic of Trump during the campaign.
Finally, the Swarm was asked to rate its confidence in its Romney prediction. First, the Swarm expressed its confidence as being somewhere between 40 and 60%, and then the Unanimous AI researchers drilled down on that response.
As you can see, the Swarm is reasonably confident that Mitt Romney will be the eventual pick from the six finalists. While we don’t recommend gambling – especially not on something like this! – it’s interesting to note that betting markets have installed Romney as the clear favorite.
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