Thread

DraftKings is using AI to behaviorally target chronic gamblers

570 points · 432 comments · paimapi

ecshafer · 1790700742 · focus · HN ↗
Legalizing sports betting and online gambling was such a massive mistake. They are sleazy immoral industries that profit on suffering.
1. ActorNightly · 1790704798 · focus · HN ↗
  In general, there is a bigger philosophical question.
  Do we treat humans as
  1) having full agency, and thus full responsibility for their actions
  2) having less than full agency, and then to what extent must society/governments implement control over things that humans can't control within themselves
  Because generally, if you subscribe to 1, there is nothing immortal from taking money from a human that that wants to hand it over, provided that human well knows what is at stake. So as long as these websites aren't defrauding the customers with fake stats, there really is nothing wrong.
  If you subscribe to 2, then thats a much riskier line to walk because that affects a lot of things, not just gambling.
  1. dwaltrip · 1790705051 · focus · HN ↗
    > So as long as these websites aren't defrauding the customers with fake stats, there really is nothing wrong.
    This is a moral stance that not everyone agrees with.
  2. 1718627440 · 1790705531 · focus · HN ↗
    What about fallible, gullible, with full agency?
    ActorNightly · 1790707176 · focus · HN ↗
    Then it means that people are responsible to themselves to fix their gullible nature
    goatlover · 1790711739 · focus · HN ↗
    But people aren't responsible for taking advantage of gullible natures?
    1718627440 · 1790712926 · focus · HN ↗
    The term nature to me implies that it can't be fixed, because that IS their nature.
    dwaltrip · 1790716467 · focus · HN ↗
    Every man and woman and child for themselves! Cooperation and support are for weaklings.
    More seriously, it seems like you have an uncommon view about good ways for people to relate to each other. You may recall that humans evolved to live in large, cooperative groups :)
    ActorNightly · 1790783554 · focus · HN ↗
    There is a difference between allowing free agency while creating an environment to steer people away from bad things, versus banning said things.
  3. xgulfie · 1790705935 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you honestly trust these companies to not mislead their customers
  4. IncandescentGas · 1790707014 · focus · HN ↗
    This framing is nonsense. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
    You frame as if agency exists, then exploitive coercion doesn't exist.
    We can respect the agency of folks to smoke or drink, while also criminalizing lying to entire populations about the known health effects of your products.
    We can respect people as having agency, while also acknowledging that psy-ops like those run by Cambridge Analytica, or even normal psy-ops like mass market advertising, can influence groups of people through deceptive or manipulative ways in aggregate and cause massive harms.
    We can respect personal agency while also acknowledging some folks have addiction problems, addictions problems be intentionally manufactured by products and platforms. There is a balance between allowing a poker game, and allowing the MGM Grand to plant a limo driver in a recovering addict's driveway.
    We can respect agency while acknowledging those with large reach because of wealth can cause mass harm through media, influence and coercion if unregulated.
    We can grant authorities to police and politicians without Qualified Immunity from consequences of their actions.
    ActorNightly · 1790708512 · focus · HN ↗
    You are mixing 3 separate issues into 1.
    1. If someone knows all the information, but still chooses to make the wrong decision.
    2. Someone is being told wrong or incomplete information, leading them to make the wrong decision
    3. Someone is being forced by external means into making an wrong decision.
    Two and three are already illegal, under fraud and coersion.
    Im solely talking about 1. Because if you don't believe people have full agency in that regard, you have to prove to what extent can you determine what is deception. You can't just willy nilly say that something feels immoral, and therefore should be banned.
    curiousllama · 1790712628 · focus · HN ↗
    You appear to be making the assertion that any economic exchange taken by two adults with full information is morally acceptable. Is that correct?
    If so, would you accept the following as moral actions?
    Financial adviser charging substantially above-market fees to recent widows, who lack experience in finance (All information is available, but not understood)
    Selling heroin outside of a drug rehab clinic (All information available & understood, but under compromising circumstances)
    ActorNightly · 1790784774 · focus · HN ↗
    >Financial adviser charging substantially above-market fees to recent widows, who lack experience in finance
    As long as the financial advisers statement is along the lines of "this is the service I provide, these are my rates", with no lies about saying how his rates are the best or lying about what he can actually do, absolutely no problem.
    That doesn't mean that he is of a moral upstanding character, but he certainly shouldn't be banned from setting his own price.
    >Selling heroin outside of a drug rehab clinic (All information available & understood, but under compromising circumstances)
    This one is tricky, because unlike online sports gambling, this ties into other things.
    My answer would still be yes with the following caveats
    * The heroin seller is FDA certified and not making the drug at home where he can accidentally mess it up and kill someone that is not expecting to die.
    * We have a system of dealing with people effectively who turn to drugs. Id be 100% for state/government funded drug camps where anyone can either voluntarily enter, or get put there if their drug use causes them to be a public nuisance. They can stay there, get shelter and food and basic first aid for free, and get all the drugs they want, with 2 caveats: no advanced medical care (if you OD, or have a heart attack, you die), and the only way to leave is to go through a trial reintegration program where you get support for getting off drugs, get put to work, and do this for a year before being let out.
    lordnacho · 1790712882 · focus · HN ↗
    Well I agree that 2 and 3 are settled matters, but 1 is simply hiding an unexamined definition of what choice is.
    So, what does it mean to choose something with full agency?
    ActorNightly · 1790785040 · focus · HN ↗
    It means that you assume that the person is capable of rationally analyzing a situation, and making the best choice for themselves. And if that choice is financial ruin, than that is what they want, and if doesn't affect anyone else, they should be able to make that choice.
    tzs · 1790724556 · focus · HN ↗
    It is possible to believe that people have full agency and allow them to make wrong decisions, but in the case of wrong decisions about harmful addictive things where such people tend to later themselves wish they had not gone down that path also believe that we should not allow others to help them make that wrong decision.
  5. slashdave · 1790710615 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you know what an addiction is?
    ActorNightly · 1790710666 · focus · HN ↗
    Are humans not in control of what they get addicted to? Or are we genetically born with a switch that gives us no option to get addicted to stuff?
    lordnacho · 1790713339 · focus · HN ↗
    > Are humans not in control of what they get addicted to?
    When you see an attractive woman, do you have a choice about whether you think she's attractive?
    I would say that is so instinctual as to not be a choice, even though different people have different opinions about who is attractive. And yet we know that men in particular go to great lengths to be with attractive women, some to the point where it becomes an obsession.
    What about food? Do you not like things that have a bit of fat, sugar, and maybe some crunch to it? There are clearly people who, despite having all the necessary information, will eat too much, to the point where they become ill from it. How is that a choice?
    ActorNightly · 1790785443 · focus · HN ↗
    Every decision that we make, at every moment in our lives, is exactly how an LLM chooses the next token to output - at the end of our thought chain, there is allways one that wins with the highest probability.
    Its highlighted well in the psychological effect of tossing a coin when you are not sure about something, not to make the choice for you, but to see how you feel about the outcome, which tells you what you really want.
    So for someone that overeats, and then feels ill, knowing that would happen, is simply a case of them valuing the enjoyment of food over feeling ill. If they were perfectly logical, without emotions, they would overeat, feel ill, and then not complain about feeling ill because they understood that they did it to themselves and this is a necessary sacrifice for the enjoyment of prior. But because humans are emotional we react to feeling ill with negative emotion, which externally makes it seem like we made the wrong choice, but we didnt.
    slashdave · 1790807107 · focus · HN ↗
    Pure nonsense. A mind is not a sequential automaton.
    ActorNightly · 1790873742 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't understand what Im saying then.
    Fundamentally, when it comes to making any decision, there is always one that we will pick (which sometimes includes inaction), based on perceived values of the expected outcome.
    We may feel bad about it, we may feel scared, we may have any other emotion in relation to it, but if a person commits to that decision, that perceived outcome is what they truly desire.
    This may seem like we don't have free will, but that is not the case. We can chose what we value, which affects how we internally rank outcomes based on the percieved value. And that can be a logical decision.
    slashdave · 1791148096 · focus · HN ↗
    > based on perceived values of the expected outcome
    Not true either
  6. sidewndr46 · 1790712231 · focus · HN ↗
    We clearly subscribe to option 2 in the United States. We don't allow access to medication based on your own volition. We don't allow access to medical procedures based on your own volition.
    ActorNightly · 1790784955 · focus · HN ↗
    Option 2 is world wide. Unfortunately it seems to be the correct one if we want society to last. I don't think that humans have the internal machinery in their brains compatible with growing a society without strong oversight.
  7. einpoklum · 1790718222 · focus · HN ↗
    You're treating the state as "we". It certainly claims to be "us", but that claim is - for most world states - partially, or entirely, invalid.
    Also, on a semi-related note - there is the legality of gambling, the legality of running a gambling operation, and the legality of doing so for pecuniary gain, and it is possible for just part of these three to be illegal.

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