- The Melbourne Cup is one of the toughest races to pick
- The best stayers in the world will compete in Flemington
- Can AI help you pick a winning bet in 2024?
Picking a winner at the Melbourne Cup can sometimes be as much a matter of luck as skill, so how will artificial intelligence fare in choosing this year’s race.
Although Vauban and Buckaroo are the favorites to win the race that holds a country back, history has shown that favorites are born to be beaten and the field is wide open for almost any outcome at Flemington this year.
Gamblers, bookmakers, trainers, former jockeys and pundits have flooded social media with their tips and they all have starkly different views on who will be Australia’s biggest stayer in 2024.
Some of them claim to have systems or algorithms that they used to determine the final order of the Melbourne Cup.
But with so many variables at play, can any of these systems be trusted?
That’s why financial services firm Macquarie has turned to artificial intelligence [AI] to determine the winner of the 2024 Cup.
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In 2018, OpenAI launched GPT-1, a language model with 117 million parameters, which evolved into the highly advanced ChatGPT in 2020.
With each iteration, these models have become more adept at understanding context, generating human-like responses, and assisting in various applications, marking rapid progress in just a few decades.
That’s why Macquarie entered all the data this year into a variant of ChatGPT called PunterGPT.
Macquarie used data to correctly predict the 2023 winner Without a Fight using PunterGPT and they have revealed the picks the AI software generated for the 2024 Melbourne Cup.
“This year isn’t just about proving last year wasn’t a fluke – it’s about cementing our place as the dark horse in the race of Melbourne Cup oracles,” the company said.
Macquarie’s tips for the Melbourne Cup using traditional data analysis
The company’s AI tips for the big race, with overlapping runners highlighted in green
A packed crowd has gathered at Flemington for the 2024 Melbourne Cup event
First, Macquarie revealed the horses their traditional system had chosen, with Vauban, Onesmoothoperator and Sea King tipped to make up the top three.
AI may know something we don’t, as the PunterGPT model doesn’t even have race favorite Vauban finishing in the top six. However, they agreed that Sea King and Onesmoothoperator would finish in the top three, with Sea King claiming the cup.
PunterGPT then predicts that second favorite Buckaroo will have to settle for fourth place, with Absurde in fifth and Japanese raider Okita Soushi in sixth.
If you’re looking for a combination of both traditional and AI predictions, the overlapping horses were Sea King, Onesmoothoperator, Absurde and Okita Soushi in the top six.