After a day discussing all the innovation that seems possible in the world of gambling, the final speaker of G2E Asia @ The Philippines helped the audience take a broader perspective of the tools available to them. Earle Hall, CEO of AXES.ai and chair of the GSA blockchain group, relayed his message that the industry better take Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology seriously.
Every generation has a technology revolution, Hall first told the crowd, and they are getting more intense over time. We’ve just come to the end of the online shopping revolution, and now AI ready to change the world. A “quantum leap” of potential change is coming, and computers are quickly becoming capable of determining potential behavior, possible emotion and general thinking without judgement.
To get ready for this AI revolution, he cautioned that the basic level of what we consider literate also has to evolve. Reading and writing hasn’t been good enough for years, as basic Internet use has become the standard. This generation will now have to learn how to live in harmony with AI or get left behind.
This is all possible due to the incredible speed that’s coming to computing. Thanks to incredible computational power, AI will soon be capable of all three levels of human thought: inspiration, intuition and animal instinct.
As a result, companies that are now embracing AI are seeing a huge advantage over their competition. Amazon, applying herd theory to their algorithms, can now predict what consumers will want to purchase based on what their neighbors are shopping for. Applying that knowledge to AI, Amazon can make the right recommendations and increase their sales.
But AI has to be applied with blockchain technology, Hall stressed. “If AI is not blockchain, it is dangerous to the point of being mortally dangerous,” he commented. He said he attends conferences like G2E to warn that the data AI draws from has to be incorruptible, as bad actors could otherwise corrupt them for their own needs, and he predicts the next global catastrophe will be AI based as a result.
So how does this all relate to gambling? Hall believes AI will be the new frontline in protecting us from ourselves. “AI can predict, in seconds, AI can help cure problem gambling,” he noted. Combining know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering protocols, facial recognition and artificial intelligence can create the perfect system to stop gamblers before a problem becomes serious.
This cocktail of technologies quickly becomes a vital tool for both operators and regulators. Operators applying the right technology in the right ways can quickly remove customers from the casino floor before they ruin their own lives, and unimpeachably prove to regulators that they are practicing responsible gambling.
It doesn’t stop there though. Game developers can use feedback from AI and facial recognition to identify boredom in players, and optimize their games for the best experience. The technology can also identify the health of a machine, allowing systems to notify the house when they will need maintenance before ever breaking down. Each of these applications improve the bottom line for the industry.
Hall ended the day with a few tips of how to prepare for this next technological revolution. For those building AI programs, he emphasize using the broadest the broadest, most heterogeneous data possible, allowing the software to learn as much as it possibly can from a wide range of sources. He also re-emphasized the need to marry it with blockchain technology, to protect it against outside attacks.
Everybody better get educated in AI now, Hall stressed, because he predicts AI technology will go from crawling to walking in the next 36 months. Knowing how to apply it and how to protect against the worst of it will be vital.
