Just as she did for March Madness, Amazon’s Alexa has officially made an accurate prediction about who will come out on top in the NBA Finals. A few months after calling that Villanova University would come out on top, Alexa correctly bet on the Golden State Warriors.
If you asked the smart assistant prior to Friday, June 8, “Who will win the NBA Finals this year?” you’ll be met with the following thesis: “Even with both conference finals going to game 7, these playoffs were over before they even started. I think the Warriors will win the playoffs pretty handily, and the rest of the league will spend the offseason trying to figure out what they will do to damper the dynasty.”
That is some pretty sophisticated sports analysis for an assistant that lives in your speaker and is generally tasked with helping you turn out your lights or play music.
But if you tried to delve deeper into Alexa’s opinions, you may have been a bit disappointed. Similar to her March Madness predictions, Alexa wasn’t able to give you a sense of who she thought would win each individual game. If you asked, for example, “Alexa, who will be NBA MVP this season?” you will most likely be met with silence. For the record, it was Kevin Durant.
This, of course, is most likely because Alexa’s “opinion” is tied with most sports analysts in the industry these days. As Fortune noted, Alexa’s engineers most likely plugged in that response by scraping news feeds for similar questions and answers, much in the same way Alexa tells you about the stock market or your morning headlines.
We should also point out that Alexa was likely just a bit biased when it came to her predictions. After all, the Warriors are based in Oakland, California, which is a bit closer to Alexa’s HQ of Seattle than Cleveland, the home of the Cavaliers. But all the same, Alexa’s predictions came true as the Warriors swept the Cavaliers in four games on Friday with a 108-85 win. We’ll see what sports tournament Alexa can call next.
Updated on June 9: Added news that Alexa correctly predicted the Warriors’ win over the Cavaliers.
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