A platform that crowdsources the insights of experts to make predictions on events has come up short in its second attempt to call the Kentucky Derby. It got last year's race exactly right. Unanimous A.I., a company touting the power of collective intelligence to provide insights into the future, correctly predicted the top four finishers of the 2016 Derby: Nyquist, Exaggerator, Gun Runner, and Mohaymen. Anyone who bet their prediction of the top four finishers would have scored a so-called "superfecta" that paid out on odds of 540 to 1. That success earned Unanimous this year an official handicapping partnership with Churchill Downs, the racetrack where the Kentucky Derby is held, and the company once again used its AI platform to analyze input from "some of the best racing minds in the world."

Can AI outpace the expertise of vaunted futurists like Mary Meeker or Ray Kurzweil? The artificial intelligence system called UNU is slated to answer questions tomorrow about technology and its long-term impact on humanity via a Reddit AMA ("ask me anything" interview). The same system accurately predicted Oscars winners, and the top four horses to win at the Kentucky Derby previously. UNU CEO Louis Rosenberg placed a 40 bet on the horse races and took home a 12,700 prize after putting his faith in his own technology, he told TechCrunch. UNU employs crowd wisdom to deliver its forecasts, but it differs from familiar crowdsourcing technology, surveys and polls. Instead, it uses "swarms," or the hive mind to derive forecasts and conclusions.