This Scary-Accurate Predictor Is Guessing Our Next President Today

Earlier this year, the winners for both the 2016 Oscars and the Kentucky Derby were accurately predicted. Now, the folks behind those correct predictions are taking on something even more important: the 2016 presidential race. Those "folks" aren't high-power political analysts, or mathematically gifted data scientists. Unanimous A.I. is the startup behind the smart, scarily accurate technology that will tell us if Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton will come away with a win. But its intelligence is entirely based on our opinions. "Unlike traditional AI, which aims to replicate human intelligence with software…we use technology to amplify human intelligence," Unanimous A.I. explains on its site. The company uses a concept it calls "Swarm Intelligence," which asserts that the collective ideas of a randomly selected group are more powerful than those of a single individual. This means its predictions reportedly take into account "our natural human intuitions, emotions, and sensibilities." Unanimous A.I. uses software called UNU to pull together opinions from various individuals and create its formal prediction. At 1 p.m. EDT today, Engadget reports, a group of 100 to 200 Unanimous A.I. users, people like you and I, but who have used UNU software previously, will answer questions in a live "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit. Those answers will then be pooled to tell us who we can expect to see in the White House after President Obama takes up his new residence, a mansion in Kalorama. Of course, there's still plenty of time for public opinion to shift, and ultimately, no one can say exactly what will happen come Election Day. But Unanimous A.I. is going to give it their best shot.