How An Indian Startup Trumped US

As Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United of States of America defeating Hillary Clinton, his campaign not only defined expectations and conventions at every turn, but also proved all predictions wrong. All but one!

- Sanskriti Shukla

The 2016 US presidential election results may have come as a shock to Democrats and a great surprise to many Repub-licans, sending aftershock waves throughout the world. But for Sanjiv Rai, a first-generation Indian innovator and serial entrepreneur, it came as a confirmation of the abilities of his AI software MogIA. While all TV analysts and media experts in the US had mistakenly given Hilary Clinton a 5.2 lead, MogIA accurately predicted that Donald Trump would still be in the lead and win by a roomy margin.

The election results on November 8, 2016, took all of America by surprise as Trump romped home with 306 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232 votes. The counts were later adjusted to 304 and 227 respectively, after defections on both sides, formalizing Trump’s election to the Presidency.

What is most interesting is MoglA predicted Trump’s victory in October, even before the FBI announced it was examining new Clinton emails following Wikileaks revelations about impropriety.

MogIA is an artificial intelligence system and election predictor, and has now successfully predicted its fourth election in a row. The artificial intelligence system, created in 2004, has been learning from its environment and getting smarter each day. The system, which learns in real-time by analyzing data on the internet, placed its bets on Trump in October to win Presidential Election after it successfully predicted both Democratic and Republican party primaries.

The term ‘MogIA’ has been derived from the name ‘Mowgli’, the child from Rudyard Kipling’s novel The Jungle Book. Rai thought this was the most suitable for his AI model because it learns from the environment.

Where did this confidence come from?