UNANIMOUS AI FINISHES IN THE TOP 8% OF ALL BRACKETS ON ESPN

Villanova’s victory over Michigan on Monday night earned the Wildcats their second national championship in three years. The Wildcats’ victory capped off one of the most unpredictable tournaments in NCAA history, as top overall seed Virginia became the first #1 ever to lose to a #16 seed. That upset busted brackets across the nation since the Cavaliers were picked to cut down the nets on more brackets than any other team.  Even ESPN’s “People’s Bracket“, which computed the “wisdom of crowds” by averaging the brackets of 17 million basketball fans, picked Virginia to win it all.  This crowd bracket was unimpressive, performing between the 50th and 60th percentile on ESPN’s Bracket Challenge throughout March Madness. 

But are “swarms” smarter than crowds? 

Absolutely, and the results were not even close.  While the crowd of 17 million basketball fans produced weak results in the ESPN Bracket Challenge, a swarm of just 50 average basketball fans thinking together as a Swarm AI system not only correctly predicted Villanova as the national champion, it finished in the top 8% of the millions of brackets on ESPN. In other words, the Swarm AI system combined the wisdom, intuition, and intelligence of a group of average people ( fans who would perform around the 50th percentile individually ) and with the help of AI algorithms, turned them into a college basketball super-expert. For comparison, ESPN expert Stephen A. Smith performed in the 49th percentile, proving that being a highly-paid ESPN expert doesn’t equate to even above-average performance.

Here are the Swarm AI results:

The March Madness Swarm was remarkably consistent in its confidence in Villanova. Most importantly, the AI picked Villanova to win it all in its original pre-tournament optimized bracket, and reaffirmed that choice at every turn, first in its Sweet 16 Bracket and then one last time in its perfect Final Four prediction.

March Madness is only the latest in string of incredible displays of amplified intelligence by the Swarm AI. Just this past weekend, a group of EPL fans hit a 6 team parlay that turned $5 into $230 for a 45-1 return. That kind of result would impress anyone…except the three members of the EPL Swarm who hit a perfect 10 team soccer parlay that paid off over $1,000 to 1. Those results come on the heels of the Oscar Swarm going 15 for 16 on Hollywood’s biggest stage, outperforming every expert on record.

That consistent record of predictive intelligence, combined with  is a key reason why Swarm AI won Best in Show at the 2018 SXSW Innovation Awards, and took home the first ever Innovation Award for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

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 platform? Check out our TED talk…