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DraftKings is using AI to behaviorally target chronic gamblers

570 points · 432 comments · paimapi

  1. ecshafer · · focus · HN ↗
    Legalizing sports betting and online gambling was such a massive mistake. They are sleazy immoral industries that profit on suffering.
    1. ActorNightly · · 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. slashdave · · focus · HN ↗
        Do you know what an addiction is?
        1. ActorNightly · · 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?
          1. lordnacho · · 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?

            1. ActorNightly · · 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.

              1. slashdave · · focus · HN ↗
                Pure nonsense. A mind is not a sequential automaton.
                1. ActorNightly · · 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.

                  1. slashdave · · focus · HN ↗
                    > based on perceived values of the expected outcome

                    Not true either

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