By simulating matches on its FIFA game, EA Sports has managed to predict the winner of the World Cup… for the fourth time in a row. Find out how the world-famous soccer game achieved this feat, while the world’s most advanced supercomputers failed miserably…
In a dossier published at the start of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, we presented the predictions of artificial intelligence. If some AIs were wrong in their predictions the victory of Brazil or Englandothers predicted Argentina’s triumph.
The supercomputer at the BCA research institute anticipated a final between Argentina and Portugal. Only one of the two teams showed up, Ronaldo’s squad being eliminated by Morocco, but the machine predicted victory for the Albiceleste.
However, the most impressive prediction wasn’t made by a supercomputer or artificial intelligence per se. By simulating the matches on its FIFA 23 video gameEA Sports predicted the winner of the World Cup… for the fourth time in a row.
FIFA: the perfect simulation?
As before every World Cup, EA Sports has launched a 64-match simulation on FIFA 23. The video game giant predicted that Argentina would win, and was only wrong about their opponent: Brazil.
His predictions were not so far off the mark, as he expected France to finish third. Furthermore, Argentina were expected to win thanks to a single goal from Lionel Messi.
Previously, FIFA had anticipated France’s victory in 2018Germany in 2014, and Spain in 2010. This is the fourth time in a row that his predictions have come true…
This clearly confirms that the FIFA engine imitates reality to perfection, and the player statistics are faithful. From a certain point of view, it’s also worrying to see how predictable our fates are… see you in 2026 to see if EA Sports repeats its feat for the fifth time!
Has an AI really predicted all 63 matches?
December 18, 2022, after Argentina’s victory in the final, World Cup AI Twitter account claimed to have made 63 out of 63 predictions.
If you go back over his previous tweets, you’ll see that he predicted everything. Even the 3-3 scoreline between Argentina and France and the 4-2 penalty shoot-out was a foregone conclusion!
The “twittos” in question introduce themselves as a collective of AI expertsand claims to have obtained the right scores thanks to its prediction model. It’s a real feat, and one that has created quite a buzz on the web.
In reality, however, it’s a deception. For each match, the account owner generated numerous tweets with all the possible results between each team. He then simply deleted all the tweets except the one with the correct score.
And before the end of the World Cup, this account was simply private. He didn’t reveal his tweets until after the finalto create the perfect illusion. Many Internet users fell for it, but it’s unlikely that an AI will ever achieve such a degree of precision!
Despite the pain of defeat, it’s worth noting that the French team defied all the odds. No AI had predicted that Les Bleus would reach the final, but we came very close to taking the cup home…