Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. If you need a lift, just watch--or perhaps rewatch, on a loop-- the viral clip of horse-racing trainer Cherie DeVaux losing her mind as her 23-to-1 Kentucky Derby long shot, Golden Tempo, charged from the back of the pack down the backstretch to clinch a stunning comeback victory. It's almost guaranteed to make you smile, if not tear up.

When the folks at the Jockey Club released their list of over 42,000 registered racehorses in an effort to assist owners in "identifying an appropriate name for their Thoroughbreds," they probably had no idea that the information would be fed to a neural network that would try to put them out of a job. In the latest post for AIWeirdness, artificial intelligence savant Janelle Shane fed the Jockey Club's dataset to two of her neural networks and tasked them with devising names for racehorses. Turns out the neural networks are pretty good at the job, coming up with names like Long Range Toddy, Gunmetal Gray, Maximus Mischief, Bankit, Network Effect, and--just kidding! Those are all names of actual racehorses running in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. It just shows where the bar is set when it comes to the odd process of naming thoroughbreds.

When an artificial intelligence-powered "swarm" correctly predicted the order of the top four finishers in last year's Kentucky Derby, the surprising story got picked up around the world. For the 2017 Derby, artificial intelligence learned the same lesson that has been beating up dyed-in-the-wool handicappers for over a century: horse racing is the most unpredictable sport on the planet. This year's swarm only predicted two of the four top finishers--Always Dreaming and Classic Empire--and it had the pair in the wrong order. The swarm picked Always Dreaming fourth while the colt ended up controlling the race and winning easily. Classic Empire was the disputed top selection of the swarm but he barely nabbed fourth place in the race on Saturday.

From Wall Street to politics, quantitative analysts (or quants) are revolutionizing much of the world. Nowadays, that even includes horse racing. By using computers to identify hidden patterns in past racing data and arcane mathematics to optimize every aspect of their betting strategies, horse racing quants can confidently wager staggering amounts. At first, that may seem good: more money in the pot means the house and the winners take more home. Still, their trades have been blamed for (among other things) driving away other bettors and shrinking prizes for everyone over time.

In May 2016, a relatively unknown startup called Unanimous A.I. made big headlines when its AI-based platform used collective intelligence to create a prediction for the Kentucky Derby superfecta--the top four horses, in order of finish. It made exactly the right pick, which returned $541.10 on a $1 bet. As TechRepublic reported, Churchill Downs took notice last year and decided to collaborate with Unanimous A.I. to create an official AI swarm made up of handicappers and racing analysts to predict the top finishers for this year's Derby. The track is calling this the "super-expert" Derby pick. On Wednesday, the handicappers logged into Unanimous A.I.'s UNU platform from across the US, and answered a series of questions that gradually narrowed down their picks from the field of 20 horses until they created consensus on the top four picks and the order of finish: While last year's swarm was clear-cut because it was a top-heavy field with a few outstanding horses, this year's swarm reflected the fact that the race is more of a toss-up in 2017.

In May 2016, TechRepublic challenged a startup called Unanimous A.I. to predict what some thought would be impossible: The superfecta at the Kentucky Derby. Hardly anyone, including Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous A.I., thought this would actually work--but he accepted the challenge, creating an artificial "swarm" through an AI-based platform called UNU that picked the top four horses, in order, at the 2016 Derby. The swarm consisted of a group of 20 people with some knowledge of horse racing, chosen anonymously, who participated on the UNU platform. The model, based loosely on the concept of nature's swarms--How do honeybees decide where to migrate to?--incorporated a kind of group intelligence, a collective decision. The swarm correctly predicted the superfecta, beating 540-1 odds.

Google's AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol at the game of Go In 2016, major automakers like Tesla and Ford announced timelines for releasing fully-autonomous vehicles. DeepMind's AlphaGo, Google's AI system, beat the world champ Lee Sedol at one of the most complex board games in history. And other major advancements in AI have had big implications in healthcare, with some systems proving more effective in detecting cancer than human doctors. Want to learn what other cool things AI did in 2016? Here are TechRepublic's top picks.

I am excited to be here today for what is a Reddit first. This will be the first AMA in history to feature an Artificial "Hive Mind" answering your questions. You might have heard about me because I've been challenged by reporters to make lots of predictions. For example, Newsweek challenged me to predict the Oscars (link) and I was 76% accurate, which beat the vast majority of professional movie critics. I'm a Swarm Intelligence that links together lots of people into a real-time system – a brain of brains – that consistently outperforms the individuals who make me up.

Who says artificial intelligence doesn't involve humans? Try telling that to Silicon Valley startup Unanimous AI. After recently achieving the rare "superfecta" -- picking the top four finishers in the Kentucky Derby -- using UNU, a new form of human-based AI using algorithms, the company is ready to share its formula with the public. After more than a year of testing, the online platform is now available in open beta. UNU relies on an artificial "swarm" of human group intelligence that comes together in real time to make predictions, said Louis Rosenberg, its creator.

Who says artificial intelligence doesn't involve humans? Try telling that to Silicon Valley startup Unanimous AI. After recently achieving the rare "superfecta" -- picking the top four finishers in the Kentucky Derby -- using UNU, a new form of human-based AI using algorithms, the company is ready to share its formula with the public. After more than a year of testing, the online platform is now available in open beta. UNU relies on an artificial "swarm" of human group intelligence that come together in real time to make predictions, said Louis Rosenberg, its creator.