Artificial intelligence 'can beat 99% of all fantasy football players' and could one day help emergency teams save lives By
Damien GaylePUBLISHED:01:47 GMT, 13 September 2012|
UPDATED:07:42 GMT, 13 September 2012
An artificial intelligence computerprogramme has been designed that can beat 99 per cent of fantasyfootball players - and may one day be used to save lives by selecting a'dream team' of medical staff.
Theresearchers behind the software simulated the results it would haveachieved playing the past two seasons of the Fantasy Premier League andfound it beat nearly every other participant.
Theteam from the UK and Greece hope their research can be used to assignteams of emergency workers based on the different abilities of availablepersonnel.
We are the champions: An artificial intelligenceprogramme can beat 99 per cent of all fantasy football participants,its makers claim
In fantasy football participants playas a manager and select teams using real-life football league players,with 15 to a squad, no more than three from any one team, and within aset budget.
Only a limited number of player transfers are allowed throughout the season.
Byrunning simulations based on the results of previous seasons of fantasyfootball, the three computer scientists behind the software found thatagainst the league's 2.5 million human participants in 2010, it wouldhave beaten all but 2,500 people.
Now they are working on beating thefinal one per cent, IEEE Spectrum reported. And this season they hope totest the software in a live fantasy football competition.
They hope that once the programme is perfected, it can be put to life-saving solutions in the real world.
DrSarvapali Ramchurn of the University of Southampton told IEEE Spectrum:'Team formation is a significantly challenging problem for existingemergency responders, and typically what they do is they train a lot,and they try and understand each other and try to understand what othercapabilities they might need for different kinds of emergencies.
'Butthis is not entirely feasible unless you really analyse the statisticsof how these emergency responders perform, both individually and as ateam.
'So that’s the kind of domain we’ve sort of been studying and trying to apply our techniques to in order to help them.'
Next challenge: The software has thus far onlycompeted in simulation, but this season its creators will enter it intothe 'real' fantasy football league
To improve the chances of theirsoftware beating the final one per cent of top fantasy football players,the developers are introducing the human touch by getting input aboutother players' favourite strategies.
'We’replanning to enter for real now, in the real [fantasy] league, and seewhether we can actually show off how well the fantasy football player isplaying against actual humans every week,' Dr Ramchurn said.
DrRamchurn and his co-authors, Tim Matthews, also at Southampton, andGeorgios Chalkiadakis, who is at the Technical University of Crete, wereto present a paper on the research at the annual conference of theAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Toronto.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2202449/Artificial-intelligence-beat-99-fantasy-football-players-day-help-emergency-teams-save-lives.html [ 此帖被BVEsun在2012-09-13 15:51重新編輯 ]
