AI technologies seem to have been integrated into every corner of our lives. Most businesses have jumped on the bandwagon, even if it is just using AI as a chatbot on WhatsApp. AI has shown that it can do tasks that make day-to-day business easier, and South African sports betting companies have started using AI to detect gambling problems and fraud.
What is AI?
AI is software that has been designed to perform tasks and understand text. The software uses complex algorithms that make it possible for the AI and machine learning systems to be able to learn and improve from data without being explicitly programmed. It uses semantics to be able to understand and interpret questions asked in human language.
The three different types of AI
There is a lot of hype around AI at the moment and there is definitely some fear surrounding it. The use of AI has been around for a while; many just haven’t realised that they are using AI.
Voice assistant
A few examples are voice assistants like Siri, chatbots used by companies as customer care or facial recognition software. This kind of AI is referred to as narrow AI and is designed to do a specific task. Narrow AI needs human input to define the parameters of its learning algorithms.
General or artificial general AI
General AI or artificial general intelligence (AGI) is what most people fear will take over the world. AGI refers to AI that possesses human-like intelligence and can do intellectual tasks that humans can do. This technology is only a hypothetical at the moment, but there are many companies working to create intelligent machines that would learn and grow just like a human mind would. General AI does not exist yet.
Super intelligent AI
Super intelligent AI is what we see in the movies. It is still completely theoretical and super intelligent AI is supposed to surpass human intelligence.
How AI is used by betting companies
AI has slowly been integrated into betting platforms to help safeguard the players and the companies. AI is used by betting companies because it is able to analyse large amounts of data and is great at identifying certain patterns that humans are not be able to do. These patterns can then be investigated.
One way that AI is being used by the industry is to detect problem gambling. Betting companies train machine learning programs to monitor their players’ behaviour. The AI system will monitor various aspects. These include how many hours a player is logging, the frequency of the bets placed, the size of the bets placed, during which hours play takes place, chasing losses and deposits after losing. The pattern recognition that AI is good at will then come into play when a player deviates from their normal behaviour. All this is done is real-time, meaning that the AI can protect the player when it sees an anomaly and prompt the player to take breaks or advise customer care that human intervention is needed.
Another way that betting companies are using AI is to protect against fraud and money laundering. AI monitors to make sure that multiple accounts are not created. It also makes sure that there is not any credit card fraud or bonus abuse. AI also monitors account takeovers through pattern recognition with historical data of players. This can be achieved by identity verification through facial recognition that is done via AI software. Money laundering can be combated by transaction monitoring, which uses algorithms to detect unusual withdrawal and depositing patterns.
The benefits of using AI
There are a lot of developments in the future of using AI in sport betting. One idea is integrating wearable tech, such as smart watches, to monitor biometrics in real-time. This would give an indication of whether a player is going through stress while playing, and alert the player and the company. Whatever your thoughts are on AI, it seems to be doing a lot of good in this industry.
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