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Title: How Badly Did ChatGPT and Copilot Fail to Predict the Winners of the
Kentucky Derby?

Link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/04/0341234/h...

In 2016, an online "swarm intelligence" platform stunned horse-racing fans by
making a correct prediction for the Kentucky Derby - naming all four top
finishers in order. (But the next year its predictions weren't even close,
with TechRepublic suggesting 2016's race just had an unusual cluster of
obvious picks.) Since then it's become almost a tradition - asking AI to
predict the winning horses each year, then see how close it came. So before
today's race, a horse named "Journalism" was given the best odds of winning
by professional bookmakers - but could AI make a better prediction? USA Today
reports: The USA TODAY Network asked Microsoft Copilot AI to simulate the
order of finish for the 2025 Kentucky Derby field based on the latest, odds,
predictions and race factors on Thursday, May 1. Journalism came out on top
in its projection. The AI-generated response cited Journalism's favorable
post position (No. 8), which has produced the second-most Kentucky Derby
winners and a four-race winning streak that includes last month's Santa Anita
Derby. ChatGPT also picked the exact same horse, according to FanDuel. But in
fact, the winning horse turned out to be "Sovereignty" (a horse Copilot
predicted would finish second). Meanwhile Copilot's pick for first place
("Journalism" finished in second. But after that Copilot's picks were way
off... Copilot's pick for third place was a horse named Rodriguez - which
hours later was scratched from the race altogether. (And the next day
Copilot's pick for 10th place was also scratched.) Copilot's pick for fourth
place was "Sandman" - who finished in 18th place. Copilot's pick for fifth
place was "Burnham Square" - who finished in 11th place. Copilot's pick for
sixth place was "Luxor Cafe" - who finished in 10th place Copilot's pick for
seventh place was "Render Judgment" - who finished in 16th place... An online
racing publication also asked "a trained AI LLM tool" for their predictions,
and received a wildly uneven prediction: Burnham Square (finished 11th)
Journalism (finished 2nd) Sandman (finished 18th) Tiztastic (finished 15th)
Baeza (finished 3rd)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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