LOUISVILLE, Ky. — “Who do you like on Saturday?”
It’s the question leading up to the Kentucky Derby, and one Louisville entrepreneur is using artificial intelligence to answer it.
"I use AI literally every day," said Evan Gunter, Louisville native and artificial intelligence advocate. "I'm a software developer by trade and went to school for that. It's just an absolutely great tool."
"But I also love horses, so I was like, 'Hey, is there any way to blend these two things?' And that's really how it started.”
His research revealed there wasn’t a specific site dedicated to using computer-generated knowledge to handicap horse racing, so he created one: DerbyPicks.AI.
It’s a pretty simple concept: take every piece of data that is available about a race and use the computing power of AI to simplify it.
"You go to the track and you get a program; it has the horse's past performance history," Gunter said. "It has class changes. It has pace ratings and time forms. It has notes and jockey changes."
"All of this [is] information that the casual bettors like myself are looking at 10 minutes before post time trying to consume. We're giving that to the AI and saying, 'Hey, you tell us what to do.'"
He acknowledged there will always be intangible things that the computer can’t process, but if it’s based on data, he wants to use it. The hope is to give rank-and-file horse players the same insight as the ones who’ve been doing it for generations.
"Those guys that have 20, 30, 40 years of horse racing experience? They know a lot of stuff," Gunter said. "That's where AI is really, really good. It's like a superhuman when it comes to knowledge. It can consume everything out there as long as you kind of point it in the right direction.”
He said initial attempts to predict results at Keeneland have been promising but issued a caveat.
"Just look at this for informational and entertainment purposes only; past performance doesn't indicate future performance by any means," Gunter said. "At the same time, we ran it for Saturday at Keeneland — a trial type deal — and our AI did just as [well] as their expert picks. That's what we're trying to do."
There will be multiple packages available during Derby week, starting at $20 for Saturday’s races only. While he didn’t want to give away what the models are saying about the Derby itself, he said the computer likes UAE Derby winner Admire Daytona as a long shot who could outrun his odds.
In the end, he has a simple dream for what happens Saturday night.
"If the AI picks the first and second place winner in the Derby and I cash an exacta box? That would be fantastic," Gunter said.
If that happens, it would be a win for his program and his wallet.
