Thread

DraftKings is using AI to behaviorally target chronic gamblers

570 points · 432 comments · paimapi

tedivm · 1790700196 · focus · HN ↗
ProPublica had one of their reports work with gambling addition experts to see how DraftKings would respond to someone presenting signs of a gambling problem. It's a hell of a read, and makes it clear that this company is full of people with absolutely no ethics whatsoever.
<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/draftkings-sports-gambling-problem-vip-fanduel" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/draftkings-sports-gamblin...
1. groestl · 1790702969 · focus · HN ↗
  IMHO one shouldn't expect a company to have any ethics to achieve a positive outcome for society. This needs to be baked into the rules (taxes, regulation, ...), so the ethical behavior becomes the rational behavior.
  1. autoexec · 1790703135 · focus · HN ↗
    I think we should be able to expect a company to have ethics, just like we should be able to expect them to follow the laws, but we should also regulate them to ensure that they do and punish them meaningfully when they fail to.
    groestl · 1790703962 · focus · HN ↗
    > we should also regulate them to ensure that they do and punish them meaningfully when they fail to
    Fully agree, that's what I mean.
  2. Barrin92 · 1790703337 · focus · HN ↗
    companies are a fiction made out of people, they don't have anything, and regardless what the rules are I expect those people to behave ethically at any given time.
    I'm not entirely sure when people started to have this idea that when they walk through a company door, as if this is some magical portal into the realm of amorality, give up their human responsibilities and faculties
    tonyhart7 · 1790704142 · focus · HN ↗
    "I'm not entirely sure when people started to have this idea that when they walk through a company door, as if this is some magical portal into the realm of amorality, give up their human responsibilities and faculties"
    how can you became this naive ???? this is literally a company that get profit when you a lose
    for their ethics, its inline with company mission
    1718627440 · 1790705335 · focus · HN ↗
    This is not a naive take. He doesn't say there can't be bad people/companies, he says the ethics of a company are the ethics of their constituents.
    groestl · 1790704251 · focus · HN ↗
    > I expect those people to behave ethically at any given time.
    A company is set up and incentivised to maximize a profit function, and that in turn incentivises to promote people which are not impeded by ethical considerations. The hierarchy furthermore ensures that people which would otherwise act ethical, don't, for fear of losing their job. This structure behaves ethical as long as you put ethics in the profit function.
    Barrin92 · 1790715358 · focus · HN ↗
    Again, who is setting it up, who is "the hierarchy", who "puts ethics into a profit function". This is weasel language to not talk about the ethical responsibility of individual human beings.
    These firms don't spawn into existence, they don't choose their own functions and if the people in charge don't think ethically why should anyone else? Ethics is not a game of musical chairs. The people in charge of that company can choose, right now, to orient it towards a direction that's ethical, if that's not possible they can choose to close it down or leave. That's up to any person at any point.
    There's nobody to do ethics for you, there is no ethics fairy to magically imbue your company with ethics, and if you hope the politicians or "the law" does it but you can't, why do you think the politicians are going to be any better, they all have the same financial incentives. It is you or nobody else.
    Henchman21 · 1790705815 · focus · HN ↗
    It started with Milton Friedman and the idea that The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits -- full stop, nothing else.
    That frees one to think in a different way. No longer constrained by the convention of the common good, some folks, for instance, watched the movie "Wall Street", and took it not as the warning it so clearly was, but rather as in instruction manual. The wider populace believes this nonsense because it was passed on to us via Television, the Great Glowing Box of Truth that for the big chunk of the 20th century was the arbiter of reality.
    Now we have people so confused by this bullshit and so in need of viewing themselves as "temporary poor" that they vote against their own interests on a regular basis.
    Fortunately, the changing climate will wipe us out. :)
    sleepybrett · 1790714365 · focus · HN ↗
    they are making a moral decision but a selfish one. If I take this job I can eat and support my family, if I don't I need to hope that I find another one.
    Very few actually want to work for corporations that are unethical and prey on people and their weaknesses, but a large portion of the population does.
  3. 1718627440 · 1790705207 · focus · HN ↗
    You can't have rules in a society, that are against the moral feeling of sizable chunk of the population. That's just going to be a source for conflict. At some point you do need a population with a moral compass or you get nowhere as a ruler, especially in participatory ruling systems like a democracy.
  4. iwontberude · 1790706586 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  5. slashdave · 1790710425 · focus · HN ↗
    So, you want government to decide what is good and bad behavior?
    goatlover · 1790711040 · focus · HN ↗
    I do want the government to protect people from predatory and exploitative behavior.
    groestl · 1790711620 · focus · HN ↗
    I think it's not a matter of want. The goverment makes the rules, and the rules decide the emergent behavior of people, in companies and elsewhere. Whether their emergent behavior is good or bad, whatever that means, is a result of the way that your particular country selects the goverment. Mine is probably different than your's.
    slashdave · 1790821731 · focus · HN ↗
    That is not the purpose of laws
    groestl · 1791061210 · focus · HN ↗
    It might not be the purpose, but it's the effect of laws.
    thunderfork · 1790718832 · focus · HN ↗
    We do this with laws already

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