Goldman Sachs artificial intelligence system predicts World Cup 2018 win for Brazil

Today is the day when water cooler conversations around the world will likely revolve around one topic: making predictions about which country’s national soccer team will take home the trophy at the conclusion of the 2018 World Cup.

With the 21st edition of the huge FIFA tournament – held once every four years – set to kick off tomorrow, it’s true that everyone is trying to get in on calling the winner of the whole shebang. With that said, why should it come as any surprise that, in this modern era of increased interconnectedness between humans and machines, that what amounts to a robot should take a shot at picking the eventual winning team? At any rate, this is not merely a hypothetical question as an artificial intelligence program created by international investment firm Goldman Sachs has indeed made a claim as to which team of the 32 in the running for the World Cup title will actually come away with the championship.

Lest one of our readers start to question their own picks in light of what tomorrow’s cybernetic AI overlord thinks about the tourney winner, we should say that the choice made by Goldman Sachs’ robotic helper is not exactly a controversial one. You won’t find a left field team like Tunisia, nor even a dark horse like England or Uruguay as the AI’s pick – no, Goldman Sachs’ machine decided it would be Brazil that hoists the trophy at the end of the 2018 World Cup after reportedly running more than one million simulations of the entire tournament.

Yes, that is the same Brazilian side that the bookies at Bovada.lv, the world’s leading legal offshore sports betting site, have assigned the Canarinhos +400 moneyline odds to win the entire tournament. Those are easily the best odds of any team going into tomorrow’s start, which will feature a woefully awful Saudi Arabia side taking on the Russians on their home pitch in Moscow. Making matters even less exciting, the Goldman Sachs’ computer program also predicted that Brazil would win in a finals matchup against the Selecao’s old foe Germany, who so badly whipped the Green and Yellow team when they hosted the 2014 edition of the FIFA World Cup.

As boring as it the computer’s pick might be, it is hard to fault the AI for being smart with its choice. Brazil and Germany are usually front runners come World Cup time every four years, and the imminent 2018 edition is no different. Just for the record, the German national side’s odds at Bovada are right behind those of Brazil at +475, and those odds are almost assuredly going to shorten up considerably after the oddsmakers get a better feel for how each of the two teams performs in the group stage, which begins tomorrow. Germany is assuredly going to win with a soft group draw against Mexico, Sweden and South Korea, but Brazil ought to have a decent challenge on its hands against Switzerland in Group E.

Anything can happen, but at this point we cannot say with any degree of confidence that there will be too many teams that can get in the way of a rematch between Germany and Brazil at the World Cup. Whether or not that seemingly inevitable contest will occur in the final is anybody’s guess – or any disembodied computer program’s guess, for that matter.

So what else did the Goldman Sachs AI program predict about the tournament? Some other standouts include a call for England – the country that invented the modern sport of soccer, remember – will make it all the way to the quarter finals, whereupon they will be taken down by the Germans. The semis will apparently be dominated by European sides if the computer’s predictions turn out to be true, as the evidently partially sentient AI program the massive multinational banking firm uses has made a call for France, Spain and Germany to make it into the next-to-last round alongside the predicted winner Brazil.

The computer did make some bold predictions though. For instance, Argentina – which can boast of having Lionel Messi, probably the greatest player to ever lace up a pair of boots, on its roster – and Spain, a longtime source of some truly great soccer teams at the World Cup level, will both “underperform” at Russia 2018.

Reps from Goldman Sachs have said their AI settled on its prediction of Brazil to win its first FIFA World Cup title since the 2002 edition of the historic tournament, which was hosted in South Korea that year, after taking into account “hundreds of aspects” of each of the 32 teams vying for this year’s title. The models used in the hundreds of calculations run by the Goldman Sachs AI featured everything from usual details like the various sides’ win and loss ratios, histories, individual player stats and so on. But it also analyzed intangibles like intra-team chemistry and the interactions between play styles favored by the different teams going back to 2005, then cycled through “alternative combinations” of each of those variables to ascertain which of those factors is actually significant and which are up to the hands of fate.

Or something like that.

However it worked out over hundreds of permutations of the possibilities of the tournament, the computer program basically arrived at its conclusion by predicting the total number goals scored in every possible matchup between teams in the World Cup. At any rate, these forecasts – like weather forecasts – are often wrong. Even the whiz bang AI used by Goldman Sachs to assist in rigging the world’s financial systems…we mean analyze global financial trends can be wrong more often than not. Apparently, the Goldman Sachs AI really loves Brazil and has picked the Canarinhos to win the last three World Cups, although the reality was Italy, Spain and Germany were the last three winners, respectively.

BettingOddsWorldCup.com knows smart sports bettors are probably better off handicapping this tournament themselves, given the spotty track record of even advanced simulation programs like the one employed by Goldman Sachs. After all, if a huge firm like that can’t do something as easy as picking the winner at the World Cup then even a casual soccer fan could be forgiven for sticking with their own favorite or picking a less likely but still plucky dark horse entrant.