A few years ago, Alan Feldman wandered onto the ICE London show floor for a major gambling industry event.

For the past 30 years, Feldman worked for MGM Resorts International, dealing with problem gambling and its financial, personal, and professional consequences. Prior to his retirement, he helped develop a nationwide responsible gambling program that focused on helping players change their behavior to reduce the risk of becoming addicted.

While at the ICE trade show, he noticed several companies advertising new products that, using artificial intelligence, could not only identify problem gambling but also predict it. Feldman was immediately skeptical. In his opinion, artificial intelligence can do many things, but he had never heard of it predicting mental states.

Another question, obvious to any observer: Isn’t an addicted player exactly what the casino needs financially? In a nutshell, Feldman answered: no. Even setting aside regulatory issues – gambling operators can be fined or lose their licenses if they don’t monitor problem gambling and act when necessary – it’s oddly not in their financial interest to do so. So before giving a player a no deposit bonus or another reward, the operator should screen the customer for addiction.

“In order for casinos to exist, they have to have customers,” Feldman said. “And the only way to have customers is to have customers who are healthy and able to pay their bills, thereby coming back next time.” Dependent players “always end up the same way,” he added. “The end of the road is the same for all of them: They have no money.”

Not everyone agrees. Researchers who study responsible gambling say such programs are designed to help people on an individual basis without affecting the operation as a whole.

“Some operators have more effective responsible gambling programs than others,” says Leah Nower, director of the Center for the Study of Gambling at Rutgers University. “But ultimately, there is a profit motive, and I have yet to see an operator in the U.S. put as much money and effort into developing a system to identify and help at-risk players as they have into developing AI technology for marketing.”

Mindway AI, an Aarhus University company, is doing exactly what Feldman was skeptical of: It predicts future problem gambling. The company, based on research from Aarhus University, uses psychologists to train AI algorithms.

According to Rasmus Kjergaard, Mindway’s CEO, one of the big challenges is that there is no single indicator of whether a person is an addicted gambler. Most casinos identify problem gambling based on several factors – mainly money spent and playing time.

Mindway’s system takes into account 14 different risks. These include not only money and time but also canceled withdrawals from bank accounts, changes in the time of day a player plays, and erratic betting changes. Each factor is assigned a score between 1 and 100, and then the AI builds up a risk score for each player, improving it with each spin of the roulette wheel. Players are rated on a scale from green (all is well) to blood red (requires immediate withdrawal from the game).

In order to adapt the algorithm to a new casino or online operator, Mindway feeds its data to a team of experts and psychologists trained to identify such behavior.

“As soon as a player’s profile or behavior goes from green to yellow and others, we can do something about it,” Kjergaard said. The value of the program is not only in identifying “blood red” problem players; by tracking jumps in the color spectrum, Mindway predicts and catches players as their play changes.

Currently, casinos and operators focus their attention on the “blood reds,” and with Mindway’s help, they can identify such players before they reach the latter stage.

The hardest stage, according to Brett Abarbanel, is getting that data and explaining it to the player.

If the algorithm flags someone and deems them a problem player, I’m not going to send them a note saying, “Hey, great news, my algorithm has determined that you’re potentially addicted. You should stop playing immediately!”.

How to actually communicate this information and what to say to the player is an ongoing debate. Some gambling companies use pop-up messages, others use texts or emails.

Since the beginning of 2018, Mindway has signed service agreements with seven Danish operators, two in Germany and the Netherlands, one global and one U.S. sports gambling operator, Kjergaard said. Online gambling giants Flutter Entertainment and Entain are also partnering with Mindway, according to the companies annual reports.

Because the technology is so new, there is no regulatory body setting standards, Mindway and similar companies are essentially left to their own devices.

Currently, the technology is used primarily by online casinos. Operators connect Mindway’s GameScanner system to their portal, and it analyzes not only individual risks but also the overall risks across the system. Applying a similar level of control to in-person gambling is much more difficult.

• SEO Powered Content & PR Distribution. Get Amplified Today.
• PlatoData.Network Vertical Generative Ai. Empower Yourself. Access Here.
• PlatoAiStream. Web3 Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. Access Here.
• PlatoESG. Automotive / EVs, Carbon, CleanTech, Energy, Environment, Solar, Waste Management. Access Here.
• PlatoHealth. Biotech and Clinical Trials Intelligence. Access Here.
• ChartPrime. Elevate your Trading Game with ChartPrime. Access Here.
• BlockOffsets. Modernizing Environmental Offset Ownership. Access Here.
• Source: Plato Data Intelligence.