A Peculiar AI

It’s not unusual to find predictions for the upcoming year whenever the end of the current one draws near. These tend to be more for the sake of fun and a means of reflection on the past, or a basic look toward what’s to come—not real attempts at predicting the future. Well, UNU (the world’s first artificial swarm intelligence) takes its predictions more seriously, and rightly so, for it’s been on a streak of accurate predictions for 2016.

Swarm intelligence is a different take on artificial intelligence (AI). It’s a kind of AI that is inherently human, an elevated intelligence that’s a collection of knowledge and insights from a pool of human minds. It’s not purely artificial, so to speak. “We believe this is a safer path to building something smarter than ourselves, for it ensures the resulting intelligence will shares our goals and aspirations, our emotions and empathy, and most importantly our morals and values,” says UNU’s developers.

Ever since Unanimous AI created UNU, journalists and major media outlets have been eager to test just how accurate artificial swarm intelligence can be, especially after UNU correctly predicted the winners of the Kentucky Derby.