Goldman Sachs tries to predict who will win the 2018 World Cup using AI. After incorrectly predicting the 2014 tournament, the company is giving another go.
"We are drawn to machine learning models because they can sift through a large number of possible explanatory variables to produce more accurate forecasts than conventional alternatives," said Goldman Sachs.
After updating its AI's predictive model, Goldman Sachs' machine learning tries to pick the winner, ahead of the tournament, by running 200,000 models and simulated 1 million variations of the tournament.
Four machine learning model was fed with team characteristics, individual player data, as well as recent team performance information. The company then compared that data to the scores of all World Cup and European Cup matches since 2005.
Initially, it forecasts France, Brazil, Portugal and Germany to make it to the semi-finals. And with the final between Brazil and Germany, Goldman predicted Brazil to win the cup. But as the first round of the World Cup draws close, Goldman updated its model which concluded different results: England to meet Mexico in the quarter-finals, and England will reach the final ahead of Germany.
Here are some key results from Goldman's data:
- Brazil is expected to win its sixth World Cup title.
- While France has better chance of winning than Germany.
- England is expected to make it to the finals.
- Spain is underperforming, losing in the semi-finals.
- Argentina and Russia aren't expected to make it to the quarter-finals.
- The four most probable winners are: France, Brazil, Spain and England.
Soccer remains highly unpredictable, with many more variables in play than even Goldman could assess.
"We capture the stochastic nature of the tournament carefully using state-of-the-art statistical methods and we consider a lot of information in doing so," said the author of the report in a disclaimer. "But the forecasts remain highly uncertain, even with the fanciest statistical techniques, simply because football is quite an unpredictable game. This is, of course, precisely why the World Cup will be so exciting to watch."
On the other hand, EA Sports, which correctly predicted Germany as the 2014 champion, said that France would be this year's winner, winning over Germany in a match largely decided by penalties. Along with its accurate 2014 World Cup winner prediction, EA Sports has also correctly guessed the Super Bowl winner nine times out of 14.
