The finals of the Ice Hockey championship start this Saturday, and within two weeks it will be clear not only who celebrates the championship, Tappara or Pelicans, but also whether Digia’s AI was able to predict the winning team correctly.
AI predicts Tappara as the champion and Pelicans for the silver place. It has been doing this since the beginning of December - when few experts would have yet raised Pelicans to the top three. Petteri Sihvonen has also had to change his perception of the success possibilities of the Lahti team, even to the extent that the expert now believes in Pelicans’ victory.
“My and my profession’s honor is currently dependent on Pelicans. I say that Pelicans will win. I can’t stand it if it doesn’t win. And then AI would have beaten me quite thoroughly this season,” Sihvonen says.
AI has succeeded well, Petteri Sihvonen thanks AI for two things
Although the medal games are still ahead, AI already has significant successes from the season.
For the regular season, AI predicted nine out of ten playoff teams correctly, including the winner and the second-placed team.
For the quarterfinals, AI predicted all four teams reaching the semifinals correctly, when most comparable forecasts were correct for only two or three teams.
AI was also able to predict the bronze match encounter between Kärpät and Kalpa about a month earlier. Before that, the teams’ ranking in the forecasts has varied.
“The forecast is based on data from previous games, based on which AI calculates the more likely winner game by game. AI is constantly learning: when changes come to the data, AI’s forecasts also become more accurate. For example, when Kärpät changed the coach in January and got the game going after that, the team’s ranking started to rise in AI’s forecasts,” says Juhana Juppo, Chief Technology Officer at Digia.
At the beginning of the season, AI predicted even a silver place for Kalpa. Although the ranking in the forecast then fell, AI has always restored it back to the vicinity of the fourth place.
“I have to thank AI for noticing Kalpa, and for believing in Pelicans. That’s a tough performance from AI, that even in its weakest moments Pelicans stayed so high in that ranking. Although AI probably doesn’t believe - it calculates,” Petteri Sihvonen says.
According to Juhana Juppo, the forecast is once again a good example of how the best result is achieved when AI is combined with people’s analysis of various human factors.
“AI is an everyday tool just like other technologies. The key is to understand where and how it is most beneficial when used, and where some other tool helps more. Understanding the strengths and limitations of AI is the key to its effective use,” says Juhana Juppo.
What is Petteri Sihvonen’s view of AI forecasts under the final? Watch the video (in Finnish)!
More information:
Juhana Juppo
Chief Technology Officer, Digia
tel. 040 172 2859
juhana.juppo(a)digia.com