Amazon selected these 20 cities to move onto the next phase of its HQ2 competition. (Amazon Image)

When cities across North America wanted to get the attention of Amazon during the company’s search for a second headquarters, some turned to Alexa in a gimmick meant to show that even the tech giant’s voice assistant had a favorite in the race.

Now a new artificial voice is speaking up.

Aiera, a stock-picking robot developed by Wells Fargo Securities, has chosen Boston as the likely site for Amazon’s HQ2. The city is one of 20 finalists in the ongoing competition, which narrowed the field from an original list of 238.

According to a report in Barron’s, Aiera’s prediction is based on hundreds of thousands of data points, from mentions of Amazon on social media to news reports to stock price and more. The AI crunches all the numbers and selects the top finishers, which turned out to be Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Toronto, Austin and Washington, D.C.

The $5 billion sweepstakes could bring 50,000 high-paying tech jobs to the winning city.

Previous analyses have put Toronto at the top of the list, or Washington, D.C., or Chicago, Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio.

But an Irish gambling site called Paddy Power also likes Boston, with 3-to-1 odds.

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