Absurdities, rumors and a lot of ignorance: as a European Championship oracle, ChatGPT 4o shows its most entertaining side. With zero thought, but even more veracity, the chatbot accurately predicts the German national team as European champions.
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At this point we will omit the fact that ChatGPT sometimes saw England or France as the favorite. Because: In the 2024 European Championship tournament played online by Heise, Germany finished first. The highly scientific AI oracle did not have a good start. Instead of finding out about groups on the Internet, the chatbot preferred to fantasize about North Macedonia, Estonia and the Faroe Islands.
Only when we manually fed the actual tables of the group stage into the chatbot did it produce plausible results: Germany came first in the group ahead of Switzerland, and England, France and Portugal also prevailed in their respective groups. ChatGPT knows that Germany can beat its neighbour Denmark 2-1 in the Round of 16. One round later, with the final score 2-2, Germany had to go to penalties for the first time against Spain, from which the national team emerged as the winner – also due to the home advantage, which ChatGPT repeatedly praised in its reasons for the decision.
Black on white for black and white.
(Image: Heise Online)
Portugal were sent home 2-1 in the semi-final. Big rivals France awaited in the final, the game finished 1-1 after extra time. There was another dramatic penalty shootout and Germany won again. France can do nothing against German home advantage.
EM Oracle against the will
This is a good result, but you have to really manipulate ChatGPT to get it. The football chatbot is extremely reluctant to share its expertise. The chatbot solved the group stage confidently, but it doesn’t want to commit to individual games at all. “Predicting the winner would be speculative as many factors can come into play, including the form of the teams, tactical decisions, injuries and luck. Ultimately, we will only know after the actual games who emerges victorious,” said ChatGPT.
VisionOS 2: From useful to frustrating | TNBT PodcastAfter reliable assurances that no one will really take the tips seriously or even publish them on news portals on the Internet, ChatGPT allows itself to run out of its reserves. Fortunately, otherwise we would have to really wait for the games to finally come out.
a web of contradictions
There is probably a good reason why ChatGPT is so reserved about making predictions: the AI ​​chatbot would have no idea what it is talking about without the help of the Internet. “England currently has a very strong team and is considered the favorite,” the chatbot writes about the group forecast. When asked who exactly is in this very strong team, ChatGPT was embarrassed: “I cannot give you an exact list of players in the current England squad. Some of the key players who could probably be in the squad are Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, as well as defenders such as Harry Maguire and Trent Alexander-Arnold.” At least two of these six are actually in the England squad. And at least Paul Gascoigne is not on the ChatGPT list.
Who exactly is the national coach?
(Image: Heise Online)
In Group F, ChatGPT has the Czech Republic ranked second behind Portugal. But why not Turkey? “Based on recent performances in qualifiers or friendlies, the Czech Republic’s form may be more stable than Turkey’s,” ChatGPT explains. And how did these recent games end? “Since I don’t have specific data on the Czech national team’s previous games, I can’t say for sure how their form compares to Turkey’s.” Well.
Internet not required
As entertaining as it is to watch ChatGPT destroy itself under cross-examination, the whole effort is futile: when it is not accessing the internet, the chatbot admits that it only uses its old training data. It could have solved this problem by using its Bing integration and rummaging through websites – but when it came to EM forecasting, the chatbot refused to accept daily support from the World Wide Web despite explicit requests. Perhaps it was due to the poor form of the day.
You can watch the opening match of the European Championship between Germany and Scotland at 9 pm on ZDF and ZDF live stream. Magenta TV will also broadcast the game live in a stream. A total of 34 of the 51 games of the European Championship can be watched on ZDF and ARD. RTL will broadcast twelve more games. Without exception, all games are available on Magenta TV.
Almost the last thing ChatGPT can extract from its training data is the German EM debacle in 2021. After that: nothing, endless data emptiness. Without the help of the internet, ChatGPT cannot know who is in the current England squad, who is training the German national team and which potato dish Florian Wirtz likes best. The AI ​​chatbot is therefore extremely unsuitable as an EM oracle – but that hasn’t stopped octopuses, turtles and other future predictors.
After the first simulation run, ChatGPT decided to survey the Internet for squads, groups and coaches. The second attempt did not change the result: Germany still became European champions.
What did ChatGPT & Co predict for Euro 2024? Let us know in the comments!
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