Artificial Intelligence Machine Predicts 2018 World Cup Winner

An artificial intelligence machine ran 100,000 simulations of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which is hosted in Russia, and concluded that the winner of the international sporting event will be Spain. If Spain is not to prevail, the machine sequentially picked Germany, Brazil, France, Belgium, or Argentina to win.

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The calculations, which were developed by a group of researchers in Germany and Belgium, used a number of factors to determine the winner. They included, but weren't limited to, FIFA rankings, population, gross domestic product (GDP), the number of players who play together on a single club, average age of a club’s players, and how many Champions League finals each has won.

The team, according to The Next Web, proceeded to pair that data with betting odds from the larger bookmakers and ran the simulation 100,000 times to try and pick the victorious team(s).

However, the researchers told Motherboard that given “the myriad of possible constellations this exact tournament course is still extremely unlikely.”

But who's to say that artificial intelligence is the way to the future and that researchers are on the top of their game? Paul, an octopus, correctly picked the winning football team in 12 out of 14 matches during the 2010 World Cup.

Russia is expected to host as many as one million visitors from different parts of the world during the month-long event.

Meanwhile, “De la mano del Diez” is a T.V. show that will be hosted by football legend Diego Armando Maradona and the famous Spanish-language commentator Victor Hugo Morales during the World Cup, broadcasting everyday on prime time. They too will be adding their own opinion about the games and possible winners.