Germany will defeat Argentina and claim the trophy at the World Cup final on Sunday, according to the latest prediction by Microsoft's artificially intelligent digital assistant, Cortana.

Cortana, named after the AI character that appears in the Halo video games, has accurately predicted the outcome of every match of this year's World Cup elimination round so far, surpassing even Paul the 'psychic' octopus in her prophetic abilities.

When asked "who will win the Germany Argentina match", Cortana responds: "It's too early to say for sure, but I'd give Germany the edge over Argentina".

Other responses include: "Germany seems to have a slight edge. But don't card me if I'm wrong", and "Probably Germany. But you never known what can happen in the beautiful game..."

Cortana also predicts that Brazil will beat the Netherlands to claim third place.


The predictions come from Microsoft's Bing search engine, which was updated at the beginning of the tournament to support World Cup predictions.

Microsoft's predictive models evaluate the strength of each team through a variety of factors such as previous win/loss/tie record in qualification matches and other international competitions, and margin of victory in these contests.

Further adjustments are made related to other factors which give one team advantages over another, such as home field (for Brazil) or proximity (South American teams), playing surface (hybrid grass), game-time weather conditions, and other such factors.

In addition, data obtained from prediction markets allows Microsoft to tune the win/lose/tie probabilities due to the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ phenomenon captured by the people wagering on the outcomes.

Microsoft's Cortana is currently ahead of search rival Google for correct predictions.

After correctly predicting eight out of eight match results in the Round of 16, Google slipped up with its prediction for the Germany vs France quarter final. However, it went on to correctly predict the results of the two semi final matches.

Microsoft Cortana's model relies more on what betting markets are saying, whereas Google's is an "inductive model derived from game-play data", according to Google's product marketing manager Benjamin Bechtolsheim.


Source:- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/10959573/Germany-to-defeat-Argentina-in-World-Cup-final-predicts-Cortana.html