When I started working in the casino industry, back in the dark ages of 1988, responsible gaming provisions were in their infancy. The thinking was that people who had a problem with their gambling should stop playing on their own. It was not really considered the official responsibility of the casino operator to delve into the personal life of an individual. Not even if that individual had a reported problem.
But the ethos of the time did have some advantages that we should not overlook. Casino management knew their customers, in a way that would be almost impossible to replicate today. They would chat with them, have a meal with them. The role of a casino manager was almost akin to that of a confessor, knowing, and helping to smooth over the problems of their overwhelmingly secular flock.
Responsible gaming, even if they did not then understand the term, was certainly a part of this daily interaction, and I witnessed casino managers taking patrons to one side and, effectively, ending their sessions of play if they, thought that this customer had “had enough.”
Upon asking one particular manager about why this was I received an answer that has stuck with me ever since:
“We are here to milk the cow, not slaughter the cow.”
As a moto for responsible gaming, it isn’t a bad one I suppose. If we go further and extend it into the realm of self-exclusion, we could add the rider:
“Or, if needs be, we can put the cow out to pasture.”
No more milking either, because that had become uncontrolled, and harmful to the subject.
So, why am I writing anecdotes from almost 35 years ago when the title of this piece mentions the cutting-edge technology of facial recognition?
The paternalistic approach to responsible gaming of my youth worked because, ultimately, the management team of the casino knew their customers. These were no nameless and faceless, undifferentiated and interchangeable, economic units. These were individuals who were recognised by the casino staff. This was only possible because of Membership on Entry requirements and small-scale operations. But it was possible, and it did work.
This is where facial recognition technology can step in.
Facial recognition technology gives you the ability to know about your customers no matter how many customers you might happen to have.
The limitations on human scale recognition simply vanish. So, all of the casino operations who have far more customers, than they could ever recognize through relying solely on staff to do it, can rest assured that the technology is there.
This becomes especially important when it comes to the issue of self-excluded individuals who attempt to re-enter a particular premises.
One of the things that we do know about human memory and human recognition is that it is far easier to recognise people who have triggered an emotional state. So, recognising individuals who have been thrown out of the casino due to committing theft or orchestrating violence is a much easier, than recognising an individual who asked to be self excluded; or who you have merely received information on, from some third-party source, such as a regulator, or sister property.
I am sure we are all used to the situation where you wrack your brains trying to remember where you have seen someone before? AI-based facial recognition systems never suffer from that limitation because they work from mathematical models divorced from emotional cues. They also function almost independent of scale, so the number of people who they might recognize is nearly unlimited; and they work at speeds that no human could possibly match.
All of this should lead, at the very least, to a serious contemplation of the deployment of facial recognition systems as a central strand of any responsible gaming initiative that truly believes itself to be definitive, or comprehensive.
While AI systems may not determine whether a person is gambling beyond their limits, since this is a value judgement and AI systems cannot yet do this; AI systems do shine in their ability to recognise what we might call uniquely differentiated individuals, consistently, and at scale, and this capability can be used very effectively with the known subset of individuals who have elected to exclude themselves from a casino operation due to their own, self-perceived, gambling problems.
The use of facial recognition systems to identify self-excluded individuals as part of a more general responsible gaming initiative can also pay dividends in how an operations policies and procedures handle what happens next. If you, as an operator, can be informed of the category of the person being recognised (self excluded person for example) then you can far more finely, and appropriately, cater your response to account for this.
Self-excluded individuals have a problem with their ability to control their gambling therefore any approach taken to go and speak with them can be more sympathetic and much lower key than might be the case for individuals who have been involuntarily excluded, for example.
Facial recognition systems, as part of a holistic and integrated approach to responsible gaming, especially regarding the sometimes-thorny issue of either keeping individuals who have self-excluded out of the premises; or detecting them as early as is practical should they breach the perimeter, really is a new, and far more efficient and effective, approach than anything previously possible.
A new approach that is likely to lead to better outcomes for all stakeholders involved.
Especially since, with self-excluded individuals explicitly acknowledging that they believe themselves to have a problem and wish to do something about it some of the concerns regarding facial recognition and privacy can be acknowledged and addressed from the outset.
In addition, these individuals, in practice, might well be disappointed by the outcomes from self-excluding. While they might, fondly, imagine that the casino operation will try to keep them from re-entering their premises and gaming, the practical upshot is, most often, limited to nothing more than a removal from a marketing list. While this is important, it is important not to market to individuals who cannot reliably control their compulsion to gamble, this falls short of what might be required by a duty of care that actively seeks to limit the harm of gambling to the vulnerable.
facial recognition system can allow a gambling operation to go a long way toward really being responsible and reducing the potential harms as far as possible.
