The 2015 Grammy Awards took place last night and for most people, it’s another event to watch, but for Microsoft fans, it’s another opportunity to see how well Cortana and her Bing prediction engine is when it comes to “predicting” who will win in each category. Bing aggregated information from search queries and social media to figure out which artists are most likely to win an award. This prediction engine has had a good track record in the past, correctly predicting winning teams in the FIFA World Cup, The Voice, and most recently, the Super Bowl.
Bing was predicting that Sam Smith, an English singer and songwriter, was most likely to win the Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist awards. The results are out and Smith has won Best New Artist, “Stay with Me” for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and In the “Lonely Hour” for Best Pop Vocal Album. So as you can see, Bing called it. Congrats to Smith for taking home three of the top four awards an artist can win at the big event. An even bigger congratulations goes out to Bing for accurately predicting Sam’s victory.
Cortana, for those that do not know, is a personal digital assistant from Microsoft, available on Windows Phone and soon on Windows 10. Cortana works hand-in-hand with Bing’s prediction engine. “Bing uses search, social, and other relevant data to make intelligent predictions about upcoming events, like sports games, reality TV shows, and more,” the Bing prediction website states. You can check it out for yourself by visiting this link.
Further reading: Bing, Cortana, Grammy Awards, Microsoft
