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AI Is Being Used To Predict Gambling Behavior (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the connecting-the-dots dept.

"The gambling industry is increasingly using artificial intelligence to predict consumer habits and personalize promotions to keep gamblers hooked," reports The Guardian, citing industry insiders. "Current and former gambling industry employees have described how people's betting habits are scrutinized and modeled to manipulate their future behavior." From the report: Publicly, gambling executives boast of increasingly sophisticated advertising keeping people betting, while privately conceding that some are more susceptible to gambling addiction when bombarded with these type of bespoke ads and incentives. Gamblers' every click, page view and transaction is scientifically examined so that ads statistically more likely to work can be pushed through Google, Facebook and other platforms. Users unwittingly consent to the use of their data in ways they aren't aware of due to lengthy terms and conditions, enabling their information to legally be used in this way. Last August, the Guardian revealed the gambling industry uses third-party companies to harvest people's data, helping bookmakers and online casinos target people on low incomes and those who have stopped gambling. Despite condemnation from MPs, experts and campaigners, such practices remain an industry norm.

29 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by 110010001000 · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Gamblers' every click, page view and transaction is scientifically examined so that ad"

    Wow, not just examined, but SCIENTIFICALLY EXAMINED. With real science and stuff. The AI hype train is on the track!

  2. I don't get gambling by rsilvergun · · Score: 1, Interesting

    you know you're going to lose. Especially Casino gambling. It was one thing before video games when there was novelty and excitement in the bleeping lights. I suppose there's more to poker and the like, but that's not what most folks play. Is there anyone here under 40 who regularly gambles at Casinos? Or even thinks it's anything other than strange and offputting?

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:I don't get gambling by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      I gamble at my local casino every weekend. What is so strange about me?

    2. Re:I don't get gambling by rojash · · Score: 1

      You, Sir, are a normal human being.

    3. Re:I don't get gambling by olsmeister · · Score: 1

      I bet on sports. It can make even games I wouldn't normally care about interesting. I haven't had to deposit any money into my account in 2-3 years, I actually have been thinking about making a withdrawal because it's been gradually increasing.

    4. Re:I don't get gambling by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wanna bet?

    5. Re:I don't get gambling by darthsilun · · Score: 2

      Back when there were $2 blackjack tables I could go to Vegas with $100, eat at $5 all-you-can-eat buffets, pay $25 for a clean hotel room, see a show, fill up the gas tank on the way out, and come home with $80-100 in my pocket.

      Not a bad way to spend the weekend.

      Now that the blackjack tables have $20 minimums, hotel rooms are $100+, and the all-you-can-eat buffets are gone: not interested.

      Yeah, inflation. I know.

    6. Re:I don't get gambling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Do you gamble at poker machines - and if so, out of genuine curiosity, could you explain why?

      I mean, I kinda get gambling on sport - not my thing, but I guess you combine something you enjoy watching with the delusion that you can predict the outcome, add some extra spice to cheering for an outcome, fair enough.

      And cards... yeah I suppose it's an excuse to sit around, have a drink and play a game with your mates, so ok, I get that.

      But poker machines... why? I mean seriously, why? Unless you're a complete nit you know that you'll lose - pretty much 100% guaranteed. And there's no social upside. Really, to me, it just looks like poker machine players willingly turn themselves into zombies, mindlessly shovelling their hard-earned into a machine that gives nothing back but random blinking lights and annoying noises. How is that fun?

    7. Re:I don't get gambling by Spy+Handler · · Score: 3, Interesting

      you know you're going to lose

      Wrong. You can win or lose. That's why it's called gambling.

      If you absolutely know for certain you're gonna lose, nobody would gamble and casinos wouldn't exist. It's the thrill of winning money that keeps people hooked.

      Over long term yes the house wins. Law of large numbers and all that. But over a short time period - say one hour or one day - you can easily win. I've done it, I won 5 grand playing blackjack one night when I was 22 years old. It was exhilarating.

    8. Re:I don't get gambling by tgeek · · Score: 2

      Much like other addictions, when a gambler gets hooked, all common sense and reason goes out the window.

      Back in my drinking days, I'd hit the same bar every day after work. One of my friends there (a non-drinker) would be sitting in front of the "for entertainment only *wink, wink*" video slot machine for hours every day feeding it $20 at a time. The bar owner made no secret of the fact the machine was set to pay out only about 80% of it's take. And my friend was virtually the only person who ever put money in the machine.

      To everybody but him, it was painfully obvious that very best he could possibly do was win back 80% of his own money he had put in. He could never see it that way though. He could only see "today". For example, he could go several nights in a row losing a few hundred bucks, but then on the next night maybe win $200 after only putting $20 in. He'd be so proud of that $180 "profit" but always lose sight of $250 he blew in the previous days.

      I suppose he could have gone on like this for a while, only losing roughly 20% of his money. But eventually some other regulars in the bar colluded with the bartender to figure out when the machine hadn't paid out recently but was packed full of my friends money. And would play when the machine was fat and he wasn't around. It wasn't long before he was financially wrecked.

    9. Re:I don't get gambling by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Some people just do it for the thrill. I play the lottery, even though the chance of winning is tiny it gives me a little bit of entertainment each week in exchange for a tiny sum of money I can afford to lose.

      But like most things that are fun and pleasurable, it can be addictive. That little hit of adrenaline when the wheel spins or you get a good hand creates a feedback loop. It's a known vulnerability in the human brain, there is probably a CVE for it somewhere.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:I don't get gambling by gnick · · Score: 1

      Have you calculated a ROI for your investment at the gambling tables? You can find better investments, like putting the $$ in the shoe box under your mattress. I assume you find it entertaining and aren't planning a jackpot as your retirement strategy. I had a wife who really liked the casinos and I'd go occasionally, but I never got the bug. It seems like throwing away perfectly good money. If you leave the tables for the bar it's a sure thing.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    11. Re:I don't get gambling by Translation+Error · · Score: 1

      If you enjoy the games and consider your wagers to be the cost for entertainment, it's not so hard to understand. You definitely shouldn't be expecting to win, but it's great if you do and an added thrill. The fact that you have real money on the line (always think of chips as money from your pocket) makes it more exciting to some--just like playing hardcore mode in a video game.

      When all's said and done, if you're not having fun playing the games, no, there's no good reason to gamble. And if you don't consider the money you're wagering to be the price to play, it might not be the best idea for you to gamble.

      --
      When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
    12. Re:I don't get gambling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      i know people who have absolute faith in their (or someone else's) luck. I have been regaled with stories of how they were stranded in a remote location with a poker machine until someone used their last dollar to win $20 and they got out.

      in a previous relationship I was drug to Vegas and a casino. I made use of the "day care" (video games for kids whose parents were too busy losing money to look after them) while my ride blew money. At the end I was surprised to hear that $xx had been won -- but on questioning it transpired that $xx was actually the total payout with the cost to play being in excess of that.

      what I did learn was that the stupid machines have their payout prominently labeled on them. So gamblers are confronted with a slot machine saying 99% payout -- and yet they still feel they can win. And, in the short term, with enough money to avoid bottoming out, you can. But since you don't know when the loss will come the gambler keeps going. And even after they start losing following a winning streak they keep playing in order to "make up" their losses.

      i was really surprised when a friend of mine who is a statistician started taking his family on trips to vegas for everyone to lose money. He's a smart guy and *has* to know that they cannot come out ahead -- and yet he still does it.

      in gambling, the house *always* wins. And it isn't because they strong arm the "real" winners and take their money. Nothing that nefarious: but *all* games are structured (not rigged) to make them money. If they weren't they wouldn't offer them.

    13. Re:I don't get gambling by Jeremi · · Score: 1

      Over long term yes the house wins. Law of large numbers and all that. But over a short time period - say one hour or one day - you can easily win. I've done it, I won 5 grand playing blackjack one night when I was 22 years old. It was exhilarating.

      ^ This is exactly the answer to the previous poster's question: gambling takes advantage of peoples' natural tendency to focus more on the near-term and less on the long-term. In the short run, gambling looks like a risky but potentially lucrative (and therefore exciting) "business opportunity". In the long term, it's obviously a scam, but that doesn't count for much with people who are not in the habit of thinking about the long term.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    14. Re:I don't get gambling by kamapuaa · · Score: 1

      I myself don't like gambling, but what you're saying is disingenuous. Nobody thinks of it as a "business opportunity" or a good way to make money. It's just a fun but ultimately harmless risky behavior for 99% of people. You're *not* guaranteed to lose money - I mean, of course you would be if you went every day for a year, but if you go for a weekend you make money 45% of the time and lose money 55% of the time.]

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
    15. Re:I don't get gambling by bloc50 · · Score: 1

      Gambling can never be certain, can only be calculated nearly Whatsapp Dating Sites South Africa

    16. Re:I don't get gambling by epine · · Score: 1

      It was exhilarating.

      Odds are—and you can bet the casino's bank on this—that momentary exhilaration tapped you for $15,000 going the other way over the next decade.

      There's a good reason the first hit of crack cocaine is usually on the house.

      I'm pretty up to speed on the PFC, dopaminic down-regulation, the basolateral amygdala, and the nucleus accumbens today (all implicated in sketchy impulse control) as I just invested my first two hours with Sapolsky's recent book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst last night. Ten years in the making, and his hard work shows on every page.

      This is the kind of book that makes people wake up and realize that A Brief History of Time was a total cake walk, even with here and there an equation or two. By the end of 700 dense pages, I fear my fresh knowledge will have all blended back together again.

      List of War and Peace characters ain't got nothing on neuroanatomy.

  3. True AI ... by Darkling-MHCN · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And when true AI finally does arrive it'll be on the back of tens of thousands of machine learning systems that have come before it which have been trained to treat people like they're something to be harvested. We're well on the way to the matrix, although it won't be at the end of a marxist robotic revolution rather than an inevitable evolution.

  4. Re:Hey Beau! by rmdingler · · Score: 1

    Actually, it isn't. See my post in the last thread. What is up with all of these "Al" stories? There is a lot in tech news that isn't being covered while every other story on the front page is about Al. Did I miss something?

    The Linux users that used to be all over slashdot have moved to Phoronix, and with good reason.

    All that is left now is this crap.

    Right, as participating in /. and Phoronix are mutually exclusive activities... with your post representative of a mere statistical anomaly.

    --
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    Ernest Hemingway

  5. Re:Hey Beau! by burtosis · · Score: 1

    Did I miss something?

    Yes. Tomorrow's article will be applying this "AI" to lootboxes.

  6. Re:Hey Beau! by AHuxley · · Score: 2

    The AI winter is coming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    To prevent that good news about AI is released.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  7. Re:Hey Beau! by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

    > ... users that used to be all over slashdot have moved to Phoronix, ...

    That shitty website that constantly links back to itself making it almost impossible to find the _original_ article?

    Do you have any evidence that there was a mass exodus away from /. ?

  8. And sleazy psychologists preceded the AI by macraig · · Score: 2

    Does this progression surprise anyone? Mercenary psychologists that would sell out their own mothers don't come cheap; AI is a system you develop ONCE and don't have to pay a princely salary. The cost is all up-front. Would game developers who exploit loot boxes and casino game operators be interested in eliminating an HR expense? Duh!

  9. Sleazy by tgeek · · Score: 1

    IMO, this would be no different than a beer company giving out free samples outside an AA meeting. Yet another reason none of my earnings will ever be used to build a flashy casino.

  10. Fear. Big fear. by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

    And this is why we should fear Facebook, Google, and all the other data aggregators. I'm not overly concerned about obvious manipulation like a beautiful woman selling beer, but what about the subtle mind hacking which I may not even know about, targeted at me specifically? We've seen in the recent US election how those techniques are already being developed.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  11. Low income? by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

    What's the point for casinos to target people on low income? High income is much more profitable.
    Is it a "long tail" thing where they try to get a little bit of money from a large number of people instead of a lot of money from just the richest?

  12. Predictable Behaviour, Not Surprising? by foxalopex · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure why this would come across as striking, most of us have some predictable behaviour or at least things that we do. It could be as simple as getting coffee every morning or something a tad more complex but at the end of the day all the AI is being used for is to look for these patterns. In the past, it would have taken a person carefully observing and analyzing to figure this out but nowadays a computer can be used to help find that pattern. Advertising already tries to do this thou usually not as carefully crafted for every individual.

  13. Gambler by bloc50 · · Score: 1

    Am a big gambler, i mean i gamble different games types. I can tell you is not to be trusted Dating Single Women Online Love