This Predictive AI Guessed the Oscar Winners and Will Guess the U.S. President Next

[jberryhill]

2. "Sounds pretty useful when it comes to placing bets on horse-racing, huh?"

No, it doesn't sound at all useful for placing bets on horse racing.

First:

"In the case of horse racing, UNU collated a lot of educated guesses from fans and experts..."

Yes, that's called "reading the tote board at the track."

The favorite - i.e. the horse with the most money bet on it - wins 1/3 of the time.

Determining which horse is likely to win the race is only half of the problem of betting on horses. You are not betting on which horse will win the race. You are betting against a market of opinions about which horse is going to win the race.

Even if there was a system that predicted the winner of the horse race with 99% accuracy, the only money to be made would be in determining when that system was most likely to be wrong 1% of the time. In the case of major stakes races, there is a lot of "dumb money" which provides opportunities, which is why the input to this system was limited to people with expertise.