Although it has a Magic 8 Ball vibe, the artificial hive mind UNU can’t offer vague retorts, so it’s a good thing the “brain of brains,” which operates on a swarm-intelligence principle, fared well with Oscar predictions and nailed the Kentucky Derby Superfecta. Turning its attention to the volatile realm of politics, UNU conducted a Reddit AMA, answering all things Trump, Hillary, Bernie and more. A few exchanges follow.

Question:

Where do you source your swarm intelligence from?

UNU:

UNU is built as an open platform, so anyone can create their own Swarm Intelligence and populate it with people. When UNU predicted the Kentucky Derby and got the Superfecta right, we put an ad on Reddit and asked for volunteers who know about horse racing. We also put ads out on other sources like Amazon.

That said, a totally different group predicted the Trifecta correctly for the Preakness, two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and that one was fielded by a reporter, herself (Hope Reese, TechRepublic). She pulled together her own swarm, made her own predictions, and they more than doubled their money on Preakness day.

So, there’s lots of ways to form a swarm. The one thing that seems to always be true – the swarm will out-perform the individual members. For both the Preakness and Kentucky Derby, for example, none of the individual participants got the prediction right on their own. Only as a swarm did they win.

Question:

How is this different from a real time poll?

UNU:

Since the system relies entirely on human knowledge and even instinct, it’s easy to think of it as a kind of crowdsourcing platform for opinions and intelligence. But according to Rosenberg, UNU doesn’t work like a poll or a survey that finds the average of the opinions in a group. Instead, it creates an artificial swarm that amplifies a group’s intelligence to create its own. For instance, when predicting the Derby winners, the group picked the first four horses accurately to win $11,000 in a grand bet called Superfecta. But individually, when asked to make the same predictions, none of the participants had more than one winning horse.

Question:

Hi UNU, I’ll ask the obvious question. Who will be the next President?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “Hillary Clinton”

COMMENTARY: This was a difficult decision for UNU, with the swarm highly divided.

Question:

Which of the current running candidates have the best skills suited for president of the United States?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “Bernie Sanders”

COMMENTARY: UNU was asked to pick among Trump, Clinton, and Sanders and had a preference for Sanders.

Question:

IF Bernie wins the nomination, how would he do against Trump?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “WIN’S BIG”

COMMENTARY: UNU expressed strong conviction that Bernie Sanders would win big against TRUMP.

Question:

Voter turn out will be driven most by support for a candidate or dislike of a candidate?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “DISLIKE OF A CANDIDATE”

COMMENTARY: UNU had VERY strong conviction on this point – 100% certainty.

Question:

What are the odds of campaign finance reform during a Clinton presidency (or any upcoming presidency for that matter)?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: 0% CHANCE

COMMENTARY: UNU has strong conviction on this point, expressing little faith that real campaign finance reform will occur.

Question:

Who will Donald Trump pick for Vice President?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “Chris Christie”

COMMENTARY: UNU has high conviction at the present time, although it’s still very early to make such a pick.

Question:

How similar would Trump be to Ronald Reagan if he won the presidency?

UNU:

UNU SAYS: “NOT SIMILAR AT ALL”

COMMENTARY: UNU expressed high conviction, showing 90% certainty in his answer.•