The introduction of artificial intelligence has caused seismic tremors throughout the gaming world. There are issues — from how AI can best be used to whether jobs will be lost — that have yet to be definitively answered.
Hemash Bhatti, Koin’s Head of AI and Data Strategy, views the technology as an enabler to solutions.
“There’s no silver bullet to use it to solve everything we need for our customers,” Bhatti said during an interview with CDC Gaming at the recent Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. “It can definitely be something that can help build efficiencies. It’s only as good as the requirements and the strategy around it.”
One use of AI by Koin is for contextual segmentation of customers and information they impart. Traditionally player behavior is tracked to assess traits and events and a player’s various activities. But AI gives Koin the ability to go deeper.
“We have a lot of unstructured data that comes in,” Bhatti says. “Players will have interactions with guest services or customer support, and those conversations hold a wealth of knowledge.”
Koin’s adoption of AI is companywide. Bhatti is a proponent of all teams leveraging the technology so that employees can be more efficient and effective.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s the data team that’s leveraging it for automation on the back end and on our data stacks, it doesn’t matter if it’s for the developers and the engineering teams to be able to code faster, more efficiently,” Bhatti said. “Doesn’t matter if it’s marketing and product training. It’s how can we build campaigns faster, more intelligently and cheaper.”
The use of AI at Koin, however, must be grounded in clear, strategic criteria.
“I don’t advocate for stifling creativity and experimentation,” Bhatti said. “We should be able to (do that), but we need guardrails on how we do it. So, anybody can come in in the organization and say, you know, I’ve seen this application, this new tool, what do we think about it? … It makes sense for us to use it if it fits within our guardrails.”
Bhatti starts with “organic thoughts and ideas” when he’s contemplating uses for AI. From there, he refines and expands upon his ideas, trying to see how AI can best be applied. For instance, Koin’s finance department can use AI for anomaly and fraud risk detection.
“As an individual, as a human, we can only take in and see so much,” Bhatti said. “When you have the artificial intelligence applications that have the ability to access everything at the same time on your data, and they could pull up new patterns a lot more fast, they should (use it). And then we have a human in the loop to say, yes, this is good, or this is bad.”
Bhatti added that it is essential that everyone in the company identifies what is most important to them to enable success in meeting objectives. The activation of AI and use of the data generated comes in three layers: Making the business better and generating value; how to ensure the identified data is servicing customers; and how data can be used to improve relationships with whom operators Koin works.
Bhatti also hears, as does everyone who has knowledge of AI, that jobs will be lost because of the deployment of the technology. Those fears are not unfounded; in some instances, AI can accomplish tasks more quickly.
“But I think the folks who embrace it as a tool to make themselves better, to make sure that their role is more impactful, are the ones who will achieve more,” Bhatti said.