Vol. II, No. 166 From Our Region to Yours
Tech

CBS Sports Publishes AI Exact-Score Predictions for Every Week 9 Game, Shows You One

A CBS Sports article promising self-learning AI score predictions for every NFL game this weekend printed one exact score. Our tech reporter calls it the future of disclosure.

By 2 min read

The end-zone scoreboard at Gillette Stadium under the 'Home of the New England Patriots' sign, showing CLE 10, NE 27 in the fourth quarter above a McDonald's, with packed stands below and autumn trees on the horizon.
A scoreboard at Gillette Stadium showing an exact score, which it waited until the fourth quarter to do. Photo: Bernard Gagnon / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

SOMEWHERE WITH GOOD WI-FI — Friday at 12:25 p.m. Eastern, CBS Sports did something I can only describe as game-changing. It published a headline that read, and I am quoting it exactly: “Self-learning AI releases NFL picks, score predictions for every Week 9 game.”

Every game. Exact scores. From a machine that teaches itself. I read it twice and then I read it a third time, out loud, to my co-founder.

Here is how it works, according to the article by Daniel Kohn. The SportsLine AI learns from each team’s historical data. Then it evaluates the opponent’s defense by “assigning a numeric value out of 100 called a matchup score.” That is the kind of innovation that used to require a guy named Gary and a legal pad.

And it delivers. “SportsLine AI is projecting a 23-20 win by the Packers over the Patriots,” the article says.

That is an exact score. You can put that on a scoreboard. I would.

The rest of the games

Okay, so here is where it gets really revolutionary. The headline says every Week 9 game. The article has one.

The other exact scores live at SportsLine, which is a different website. The article tells you so, more than once. “You can only see the AI predictions for the Week 9 NFL schedule here,” it says, with “here” being somewhere else.

Some people would call that a bait-and-switch. I call it a funnel, and funnels are just bait-and-switches with a dashboard.

The track record

The article also says the AI “has hit thousands of 4.5- and 5-star prop picks since the start of the 2023 season.”

Thousands is a big number. It did not say how many it missed, but that number is probably also somewhere else, and I am sure it is very good. Let me jump on a quick call with our data guy and check.

Okay, I am back. He says “thousands of hits” is a numerator. He would like to see the denominator. He was, frankly, kind of a buzzkill about it.

Why this matters

Self-learning AI can now project the exact score of an NFL game. It can do it for every game. It can tell you that it did it for every game, at the top of an article, and then show you one, and then have the page note that “There is no gambling offered on this site.”

That is a full product. Most startups never get past the first sentence of that paragraph.

I still believe in it. Packers 23, Patriots 20. If it comes in, the machine learned something. If it does not, it will learn from that too, and so, honestly, should whoever read the headline.

Tech →