FIFA World Cup 2022 predictions: AI backs Brazil or Argentina; France, Germany ignored
From Nelly the elephant, Madame Shiva the guinea pig, to Paul the Octopus — the fortune-telling abilities of animals have left us speechless many times in the previous World Cups. However, this year's winner predictions are apparently based on mountains of data and analysis fed into artificial intelligence (AI), instead of gut feelings by the animal kingdom.
Paul the Octopus became an overnight star after predicting the outcomes of eight matches correctly during the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Living his life at a Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany, Paul would be given two plastic boxes, marked with flags of opposing teams with a mussel in each box. He would pick the winner by landing on a country's box and eating the mussel from it. Paul's enigmatic ability to pick the right box as the competition went on captured the interest of international media. His final prediction of Spain's eventual win made him a sensation among fans all over the world, especially Spain.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. As it turns out, Argentina has been picked by a supercomputer to win the 2022 World Cup. The experiment conducted by BCA Research, a renowned investment research firm, predicts that Messi's Argentina will defeat Ronaldo's Portugal on penalties at the Lusail Stadium in Doha on 18 December 2022. How this supercomputer placed two of the biggest football legends in the finals and that too on their last world cup before retirement, is beyond us. But who wouldn't pay good money to watch Portugal go up against Argentina!
FIFA 23, the widely popular video games franchise, claims to have simulated all 64 games and determine who will win in the Finals using the ground-breaking "HyperMotion2 Technology" and the specific FIFA World Cup 2022 ratings in FIFA World Cup kick-off and tournament modes. Once again, Argentina has been picked as the winner. However, one of the leading providers of sports data, OPTA, used artificial intelligence to forecast an alternative World Cup winner. This time Brazil was predicted to have the best chance of winning the World Cup with a 16.3 percent probability of winning the World Cup.
As far as animal predictions go, this year an alpaca, a llama-like animal, have made certain predictions regarding the world cup matches. They have kept England ahead of the rest of the other three teams in their group in the Round of 32. Do we have a cautious psychic animal, shy to predict the winners in one go? Only time will tell.
While the statistical and practical aspect of the new method of predicting winners seems to be on point, the AI has somehow managed to take all the fun out of these predictions by killing the surprise element of it. Imagine being shocked by a supercomputer accurately predicting the match outcomes because of the numerous data input. Also, remember how Paul the octopus was wrong in his prediction of Germany winning against Croatia and people demanded to eat him? We're going to miss that kind of madness this year. Unless Alfie the alpaca has some say over it!
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