Artificial intelligence could revolutionize how casinos win , woo and otherwise manage their customers
“ We are not very famous in hospitality for being adopters of technology . But this one we can ’ t miss .”
Rise of the Machines :
How AI Is Changing Casino Marketing
Artificial intelligence could revolutionize how casinos win , woo and otherwise manage their customers
Human beings have been gathering data since they lived in caves . Futurist Bernard Marr once traced data-banking to 18,000 B . C ., when people carved notches in “ tally sticks ” to record their trades . By 2,400 B . C ., the abacus was making calculations easier . In the 1600s , English statistician John Graunt used “ bills of mortality ” to track the bubonic plague across Europe . And in the 1920s , inventor Nikola Tesla predicted that wireless technology would turn “ the whole Earth … into a huge brain .”
Which brings us to the present , when every smartphone , smartwatch , credit card and social media platform is a version of Pac-Man , gobbling up consumer info to fuel the marketing machine . With all this data , artificial intelligence ( AI ) or artificial general intelligence ( AGI ) can predict what consumers want — sometimes before they want it — then pitch them in a hyper-targeted way , and do it all more efficiently .
It ’ s a potential boon for casino marketers , who still use direct mail for much of their outreach . In a 2020 article in this magazine , Clay Peister and Steve Gallaway of Global Market Advisors wrote that Big Data ( and by extension , AI ) could mean marketers no longer have to “ guess at the success of promotions .”
Three years later , and given recent advances in technology , how ’ s it working ?
By Marjorie Preston
“ We are not very famous in hospitality for being adopters of technology . But this one we can ’ t miss .”
— Andrew Cardno , Chief Technology Officer , Quick Custom Intelligence
The Bots Take Over
Just Google “ artificial intelligence ,” and an AI robot will pop up to take a bow . It will introduce itself as a computer system capable of tasks that once could only be done by you , a sentient being —“ people-y ” things like “ visual perception , speech recognition ( and ) decision-making .”
That ’ s no brag , says Andrew Cardno , co-founder and chief technology officer of Quick Custom Intelligence ( QCI ), provider of data analytics software . In Cardno ’ s view , the November 2022 launch of OpenAI “ changed everything in the world , changed humans forever , changed tech forever .” For importance , he compares it to the discovery of penicillin and Einstein ’ s theory of relativity .
OpenAI brought us ChatGPT , the ubiquitous chatbot that can compose text , respond to inquiries , carry on conversations in a humanlike way , and provide pretty fair customer service . It ’ s already spawned imitators by Google and Microsoft , and it ’ s coming to a casino near you .
“ It was a seismic shock ,” Cardno says , “ because it provides a true artificial general intelligence . We ’ ve made something that thinks like us and is almost indistinguishable from humans .”
While such technologies raise uncomfortable questions — are robots going to help us , replace us , or rule us ?— Cardno prefers to look on the bright side .
“ What ’ s the single biggest issue facing entertainment ? ‘ I can ’ t get people .’ It ’ s the hardest problem now … and AGI can largely remove that . Everything , every role in a gaming business , can double its productiveness through the use of AGI .” He foresees “ vast hyper-level automation of vast areas of the entertainment business ,” including “ really smart human-level intelligence agents everywhere in your business that can communicate with you in a meaningful way .”
For example , Cardno says , “ it could book my hotel room and dinner reservation . When I want to talk to somebody , an AGI would follow your brand and com-
18 Global Gaming Business NOVEMBER 2023