Artificial intelligence predicts the winners of Euro 2016 games

Can EPFL do better than Paul the Octopus? That's what the developers of kickoff.ai are hoping, with a new website that uses artificial intelligence to predict the results of Euro 2016 soccer games starting with the very first round. According to their calculations, France should beat Romania in the opening game on Friday, and Switzerland should come out ahead of Albania in their game on Saturday. The three researchers – who are also avid soccer fans – developed their model at EPFL's Computer Communications & Applications Laboratory. Their model uses a combination of machine-learning algorithms and data mining, making it more accurate than most predictive systems currently out there. "A lot of websites aim to predict the winners of soccer games, but they draw on data about the past performance of each country's team.