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Algorithms and artificial intelligence rule us. It’s why one party or the other flood your email inbox even though you’ve never given to political candidates. It’s why Facebook keeps serving me ads for STEM-related toys for toddlers. It’s how the betting lines shift in response to on-field events during games.
So where, I’ve long wondered, are the data-driven, machine-learning efforts to ascertain or predict whether a person has or will have a gambling problem?
Finally, an answer: It’s coming. And, also, it’s going to take a while.
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Because of privacy regulations, Sightline can’t fork over everything it knows about everyone whose money it handles. Not only do we not know these people’s names, we also don’t know their ages, genders, geographic locations, or economic circumstances. The dream might be to allow an algorithm that can identify populations likely to have trouble regulating their gambling – young men are often cited as an obvious cohort of concern – and then cross-reference that with, say, their credit score to figure out if they’re playing too much and likely to run into trouble.
There isn’t anything, however, to prevent Sightline’s own data folks from taking the sort of analysis Ghaharian is pioneering to another level. For the moment, though, Michaels wants the independent experts to use the data he can provide to think up ways to respond to people in trouble:
“I could hire Kas for our data-science team, but it was really important to get that academic viewpoint on this on the outset. It adds a lot of credibility to what we’re doing and we want to release it publicly so the world really understands how payments can help identify markers of harm.”
There’s also only so much the industry can do to stop someone determined to destroy their financial lives. The upside of Sightline’s data is that the Play+ method is available on basically every legal app, so in theory that would help build out a net that prevents a troubled player who gets limited or blocked from just going to a different app to play. But that same person could then resort to the illegal market where they are at even greater risk.
Still, it’s an ignition point for tackling a very serious problem using the most obvious tool, the thing that moves gamblers’ money around in this modern world. Says Ghaharian:
“Payments and gambling are inextricably linked.We need to understand payments if we want to understand gambling. It was largely exploratory. No one had really used this kind of data before. We didn’t really have any idea of what potential markers of harm can be derived from payments behavior. So this was definitely a first step in trying to just uncover some of those unknowns.”
Michaels is understandably excited. Since 2021, when the data set ends, there have been several states that have added online and mobile gambling options. It took six years to amass 90 million transactions via Play+, but there’s got to be exponentially more data now, right?
“Don’t give Kas the shakes like that,” Michaels jokes. “As this continues to accelerate, there’s a lot of opportunity to ensure people play responsibly and to help people who do not.”
