Digital Social Hour
AI vs Human: The $1M March Madness Showdown | Alan Levy DSH #1246
Tue, 18 Mar 2025 20:35:00 -0000
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Get ready for the ultimate showdown in this episode of Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🏀🤖 Join Sean as he sits down with Alan Levy, founder of 4C Predictions, to explore the thrilling $1M March Madness bet that pits AI against human intuition. Will cutting-edge AI models outsmart human expertise on the court? Tune in now to find out! This episode is packed with valuable insights on the future of sports betting, AI's role in Predictive Analytics, and how technology is leveling the playing field for everyone—from crypto trading to stock predictions. You'll also hear Alan's incredible journey, from building Africa’s 9th-largest franchise to revolutionizing AI-powered decision-making. 🚀 Don't miss out on this exciting conversation about AI, sports, and the transformative power of data. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🌟 CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:39 - Alan’s First Business 01:46 - Alan’s Second Business 03:29 - What is 4C Predictions 06:02 - Accuracy of 4C Models 08:28 - Genius to Consumer (G2C) Platform 10:01 - AI and Decision Making 11:04 - How FORC Works 13:47 - The Million Dollar Bet 20:17 - Cryptocurrency Insights 21:50 - AI Trading Automation 23:55 - Poker Strategy and AI 26:30 - AI Replacing Lex 28:30 - Self-Improving AI 31:58 - AI Girlfriends Concept 32:58 - AI Sentience Discussion 35:04 - Where to Find Alan APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Alan Levy https://www.instagram.com/4cpredictions/ SPONSORS: SPECIALIZED RECRUITING GROUP: https://www.srgpros.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ SPONSORS: SPECIALIZED RECRUITING GROUP: https://www.srgpros.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ #collegebasketball #nbabets #stockmarket #draftkings #ncaabasketball
Chapter 1: Who is Alan Levy and what are his entrepreneurial achievements?
All right, guys, got Alan Levy here from 4C Predictions and got a big company in the making here. Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks, I really appreciate you having me. As I said, I've been watching your content, really awesome, and I'm excited to be here. Yeah, it's not your first rodeo, right? You've built quite a few companies.
Yeah, I started kind of straight out of school and the first company I built was a meat pie company. Meat pie. Yeah. So I'm from South Africa. That's the strange accent. And we built a company that was very similar to Mrs. Fields Cookies. But instead of selling cookies, we sold meat pies. And we ended up being the ninth largest franchising company in Africa. Wow. Yeah.
And selling 8 million meat pies to a lot of angry South Africans every month. That's insane. And that was your first company you ever started? That was my first company. Literally started kind of with one shop. And built it up and taught me some amazing lessons about business. The best one being, I think, deliver extraordinary value to your customers.
And the second best one being no physical products. Margins are low, right? Margins are low. It's difficult to move around. You have to transport food in refrigerated containers. Moving them around Africa comes with its own set of interesting problems. But digital stuff's much better. Yeah.
So you started a digital company after that one? I started a digital company. We were providing leads for Forex and casinos and then got into the online casino business because we were bringing regulated casinos and United Kingdom Gaming Commission and we were bringing them players. And then like good entrepreneurs, we thought, wow, why don't we just open our own casino? In those days, yeah.
All gaming in the US was illegal. Like there wasn't betting in the US. So everyone was doing it in Europe. And now I see America's opening up a lot. Yeah, that was before the DraftKings and FanDuel days, right? Correct. I heard the craziest stat literally before I walked into this interview that Americans bet more on sports than they have in their 401ks. It blew my mind.
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Chapter 2: What is 4C Predictions and how does it utilize AI?
Wow. I could see that though, 100%. People are trying to make a quick buck and sports are a very emotional thing. And they're also huge in the US. Exactly. I mean, I haven't verified that. It'd be interesting to see if anyone wants to go look at that. But that blew my mind. I was like, even to put it in the same category is mind blowing.
Yeah. No, I can see it, man. NFL is big out here. NBA, MLB, NHL. We got a lot of big American sports. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. And in the rest of the world, we play soccer. I played soccer at school and then I came to America and everyone says it's a girl's sport.
Yeah. Yeah. People, soccer players don't get respect in America, but in Europe you're like the man. Exactly. They call it football there, but you play football. You're like a legend.
Yeah. So it was really fun. So everyone kind of grew up with that. And when I moved to America, um, got really excited about the sports. Yeah. But I don't know anything about American sports. I'm kind of learning as I go along. Well, now you'll have to learn a lot with 4C predictions. We'll dive into that. So what is 4C predictions? How did that get started? So, um,
like really interesting um ai i'm a crazy kind of um ai person i'm really into it i love it i think that it is a beyond revolutionary technology for people and it's going to do a lot of good for the world and i tell people i've also seen the terminator movie yeah so i understand there's a counter argument but um when ai um started to become kind of more relevant
I think the two sections that were extraordinarily exciting were the longevity and the health stuff. Very, very exciting. But I know nothing about longevity or health and have got no medical background. The other side was predictive analytics or making predictions. And if you think about kind of where the action lies in humankind, everything that we do is a prediction.
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Chapter 3: How accurate are AI models in sports betting?
If you're trading crypto, if you're betting on sports, if you're buying stocks on the money side, you're making a prediction. But you're also kind of making predictions every day about a whole lot of things. How long is it going to take me to get from here to my next meeting? Who's going to win an election? Everything that we do, everything we talk about is predictions.
So AI is so uniquely positioned to deal with predictive analytics. It can ingest huge amounts of data It can interpret it. It can find patterns that we can't find.
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So that's what really excited me. And in 4C, we're basically trying to get all the world's best AI predictions all in one place. So we're a platform like the same as YouTube, but instead of getting everyone to put their videos on, We get the world's smartest mathematicians, smartest AI model builders to build models and put their predictions on. Right. So we host the predictions.
We like the hub of predictions. Yeah. And some of these models were really performing well because when it comes to sports betting, anything over 56% is profit. I saw many models on your site in the 60s, some of them in the 70s. I don't know how much data they have, but... Yeah.
So it's crazy. And kind of the exciting thing for me was... Seeing not only kind of how the models perform and the accuracy that they can perform at, but the amount of talent that we attract into the site. So, you know, if I'm betting on sports, especially me, okay, I know nothing about sports. So I'm going to take it by the team's jersey or if I know a player's name. It's probably not optimal.
Not at all. And that's probably why the majority of sports bettors lose in all the time. They're too emotional with it. Absolutely. There's also like this crazy asymmetry of information. The bookmakers know everything, have got all the information and are using analysts to And the guy sitting at the bar is at best kind of watching some videos and at worst asking his friend, who should I bet on?
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Chapter 4: What was the million-dollar bet between AI and human prediction?
Right, me either. And if I was a kid doing book reports, I wouldn't. And if I was an analyst doing analytical reports, I'd use AI. So it's almost become a necessary augmentation to humanity. In two years' time or three years' time, why would you buy a stock or bet on sports or trade a crypto or buy a property without getting AI's opinion or prediction? So that's what we're trying to do.
We're trying to say, give the public, give the customers one credible place where they can get the most accurate AI predictions. And how do we do that? Bring the best talent. So we like talent scouts, but we're not scouting basketball players. We're scouting PhDs, predictive analytics professionals, data analysts, and saying to them, guys, come onto the platform.
build a model, show how genius you are, and then, as I say, connect it directly to the customers. Yeah, that's brilliant. You're starting off with sports, right? And then proving that concept and then eventually want to move on to other outlets.
Well, we move in very quickly onto crypto stocks and properties. We've got a waiting list of people who are waiting to put models on the platform. But we obviously have to verify that they're real people, test the models, make sure that they're all correct. So yeah, we started with sports and we're having a lot of fun and it's going great. And we think we provide an extraordinary value.
That's awesome. I can't wait to see the stocks and crypto one. That's going to be cool. Yeah, it's going to be super, super. I'm a crypto guy. I'm a crypto nerd. Oh, really? Yeah, me too. So I actually co-founded a crypto company called Coty.io. Oh, nice. Heard of that one, yeah.
Yeah. So at our peak, we were over a billion dollars market cap. Yeah, I remember seeing that one a lot. And right now we build in a privacy layer over Ethereum. So I love crypto. I'm deep in the crypto community. I'm a crypto nerd. I love it. I love the thesis. I think everything about it is special. And I'm super excited to see how the predictions work. Because the same thing, right?
Crypto trading is a lot of like the average people playing the game against super smart, highly technical analysts. And that's why a lot of people lose at crypto. And again, we can level the playing field.
Because if I'm a PhD and I've written a predictive analytics model on what the Ethereum price will be tomorrow, I've looked at all the data, I've analyzed the trends, I've cross-correlated it to the stock markets, I'm able to give a lot of power. So 4C is not a crystal ball. And it's not going to be 100% of the time. But the same way as me writing an email with AI is smarter,
me buying crypto with the help of an AR prediction has to be smarter. Even if I ignore the prediction, at least I know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. At least your odds are higher. Even if the prediction is wrong, at least your odds of hitting the prediction are higher.
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Chapter 5: Can AI create a perfect March Madness bracket?
So that's exactly, you know, that's such an exciting question because at that point in time, chess is a predictable game with limited moves. So you can see how a computer could always beat the humans. Sports is super unpredictable. And the big question is, is AI at the point yet where it can recognize patterns that humans can't? Yeah.
So I'm sure Sean's watching this because he's got a million dollars on the line and so do I. But basically we've taken our five top model creators that have got the most accuracy and we've got them to build one mega model to compete against Sean. That's literally what we've been doing since the podcast.
Wow. Yeah. I got a side bet on you just because I know your top five models and I think they're all above 70%, right? So that's really high for a sports bet. So yeah, I appreciate you having this. Well, it depends on the terms of your bet. Are you just doing one game or how does the million dollar bet work?
So the way it's going to work is we're going to both, it's for March Madness. Yeah. And we're both going to release our brackets. Got it. We're releasing them for free. I'm going to plug my site if that's okay. Yeah.
They can find them either at getpix.ai, super simple, or at 4cpredictions.ai. You go there, you get the brackets for free. And you can see what both our brackets look like. We've got a man's bracket and a woman's bracket. And then the total points over the tournament are all added together. The men's and women's are added together. And it's a winner-take-all bet.
I love it. Good old March Madness. What better thing to do than that? Yes. And as I say, my confession is I cannot name one team. No one's ever been able to get a perfect bracket. Do you think now with AI that is going to be possible in our lifetime? In our lifetime, absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think the odds are like something crazy, one in billions, right?
Yeah. So I say that the most naive statement that I hear human beings make, the most naive, is A, I will never be able to, followed by insert whatever the person says. Replace their job or whatever.
Correct. AI will at some point in time be able to do everything better than humans. And if you read Ray Kurzweil, if you read down the singularity rabbit hole, which I am very far down, you believe that we're going to be an augmentation between AI and humans. We'll have nanobots in our brains and we will be an augmented version of ourselves.
But AR will definitely be better than us at any given task and eventually at every given task. Yeah. So it's just, nothing is an if, it's all a when. Do you think you'll get a Neuralink one day? I would love to. I'll be the first in line. Really? Really, really. There's already someone that got it. Yeah. So that place is taken. But yes, absolutely. Wow. Yeah. Do you?
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Chapter 6: What are the future implications of AI according to Alan Levy?
Yeah. But I use AI every day. I love AI. I think it's a little creepy sometimes. Some of the models go haywire. Do you think that there's any difference between having a cell phone and having a nanobot in your brain? What is that?
because it's physically inside your brain so what if it gets hacked what if it gets hijacked and then you lose control you lose memories i don't know so i could i can make the kind of same argument about some of the pacemaker if you've got a pacemaker in your heart yeah that is connected wirelessly someone could hack into the pacemaker in your heart that person is no less of a human than any of us someone's got a hearing aid someone who's got contact lenses i think that there's a it's
There's a lot for human beings to get used to. And it's happening really quickly. And I'm as scared as everyone else. But I feel like if the right people become the custodians of AI, it's going to be hyper beneficial. If we let it fall into the wrong hands, it's going to be problematic. Well, that fight is going on right now, I think, with Elon and open AI. We'll see how that plays out, right?
Yeah. And the fight for AI is the fight for the world. Yeah.
Yeah. It's like the stakes are, my million dollar bet is high stakes, but the AI versus like who's going to get it, how they're going to regulate it, playing out in real time. And it's really exciting. And what gave me kind of, it's an interesting thing to think about when the CEOs of companies are standing in front of Congress and saying, we need regulation.
That has never happened in the history of any industry in the world. That should kind of give people a wake up call of how powerful this really is.
That's true. Yeah. I've only seen it happen maybe in crypto a little bit. A little bit in crypto. A little bit. But they don't know what they're talking about. You know? I kind of agree. I mean, you saw that with Gary. He got booted out. Yeah. He's trying to regulate every single US crypto-based company. It was... I know. That's, yeah, ridiculous. Mind-blowing. Yeah, mind-blowing to say the least.
What's the most you've lost in a day in crypto? Made or lost? interesting thing because you know i've co-founded coty and coty we had in and we still have a two billion tokens so it was well over seven figures made and lost in a day in the beginning that we weren't buying or selling them so it was kind of numbers on a spreadsheet which in a weird way is
less consequential right but um looking back um it was very consequential so yeah i think that um with the ai stuff now and the crypto and you know that's why i said you asked earlier about what's the next thing and i said crypto I wish I'd had our product when I was kind of much more active in crypto. Because we're making such human decisions and human decisions are all emotional.
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