About the Project
European Commission highlighted the need for regulatory policies to aid in the detection of pathological gambling behaviors, citing “a responsibility to protect those citizens and families who suffer from a gambling addiction.
In Portugal, the Gambling Inspection and Regulation Service is responsible for the control and regulation of online gambling and betting. To comply with operational objectives, this authority receives, on a daily basis, all data related to online gambling activities pursued by every user on every online platform with services that are accessible to Portuguese citizens.
The objective of this project was to implement an AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based system that could capitalize on the vast amount of data collected every day and analyze online user behavior to model and detect the behaviors associated with addicted gamblers.
The problem represents a major challenge for a few reasons: first, the massive amount of data involved (that will require efficient data- analysis algorithms); second, the temporal dimension of the phenomenon we intend to model; and third, the fact that we are trying to observe and affect behaviors associated with a very small fraction of the population. The analysis confronts an additional complication by virtue of the potentially infinite behaviors associated with various kinds of gamblers.
To tackle this problem, we developed and implemented an AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based system that capitalizes on the vast amount of data collected every day by the online gambling providers operating in Portugal and, from its analysis, models the behaviours associated with addicted gamblers and allows for their early detection.
The successful implementation of the system and its integration with the system currently in use by the gambling control authority will enable efficient modeling and detection of online user behaviors associated with gambling addiction.
