Rasmus Kjaergaard’s passion for safer gambling initiatives as CEO of Mindway AI is the driving force behind his company’s global presence in over 64 jurisdictions, including the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, and Malta.
“The idea of combining the strength of AI with the strength of human expert assessments is essential to capturing the full picture of gambling behavior,” Kjaergaard maintains. “Gambling behavior in general and problem gambling in particular are individual human behaviors.”
“We have a U.S. patent on the approach of combining the strength of AI with human expert assessments for the specific purpose of clarifying gambling behavior, thereby creating the foundation for operators to reach out earlier.”
Mindway AI, a Danish award-winning software company, creates solutions based on artificial intelligence and neuroscience for gambling operators, platform providers, regulators, and governments to supply early detection and intervention solutions.
Kjaergaard acknowledges that neither humans nor AI are perfect, but that the combination of the two is very strong.
He explained that humans bring different perspectives to the training of a new model, such as the psychologists and gambling addiction experts, researchers with their theoretical educational background in practical clinical experience, and former problem gamblers, who bring perspectives of what they have experienced in their own bodies.
Mindway AI’s mission is to address potential problem gaming among players, which ultimately focuses on early detection and rapid response time as crucial.
“Nuances in gambling behavior can be very different among problem gamblers, which is why it is so difficult to track if you do not have a more individualized approach,” Kjaergaard said. “It can be a sensitive matter, comparable to finding a ‘needle in a haystack’ so to speak.
“The other side of the equation is just because a player spends a lot of money does not mean they exhibit problematic behavior. We wish to provide an opportunity for players who need interaction or even an intervention. In jurisdictions where there is no regulation, operators reach out only when, very frequently, it is too late.
“Intervening too late may result in a situation where the player will self-exclude, which can ultimately lead to a good customer being lost forever.”
Kjaergaard revealed that there are many challenges to interventions. If the problem gambling behavior has evolved into a gambling addiction, there is no real opportunity to change things.
Mindway AI tracks gambling behavior for risk assessment only, which begs the question of the compatibility of the company’s solutions with AI-driven marketing initiatives.
“We observed some of our customers increase their revenue using our risk assessment with their customer databases,” Kjaergaard said. “In this sense our solutions tap indirectly into the business development of a gambling operator.”
As for directly related to marketing, Mindway AI’s customers in some jurisdictions around the world are using risk assessment to suppress marketing to vulnerable groups.
The driver for many of the conversations Mindway AI has had with customers in the U.S. is the fact that by derisking the customer database with an efficient tracking system like GameScanner and a proper interaction strategy, the lifetime value of the playing guests significantly exceeds the short-term losses on high spending customers.
“This fact is very interesting because risk assessment then becomes a business development for gambling operators,” Kjaergaard observed. “A prevalent perception among gaming operators is that gambling behavior tracking solutions like Mindway AI’s GameScanner takes revenue away. We can document that this is not the case.”
Mindway AI’s exponential growth and opportunities for expansion were underscored by the partnership it entered recently with PrizePicks, a leading sports entertainment operator in the U.S.
Integrating Mindway AI’s GameScanner solution gives PrizePicks the ability to implement dynamic behavioral analytics across its platform.
With headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, PrizePicks offers skill-based fantasy games in more than 45 jurisdictions.
GameScanner monitors gambling behavior in real time, affording gambling operators such benefits as identification and prevention, data analysis and insights, regulatory compliance, and risk minimization.
GameScanner performs as a virtual psychologist in detecting at least 87% of the cases of at-risk and problem gambling, tested and validated by Gaming Laboratories International (GLI).
Another Mindway AI solution is Gamalyze, a self-test conducted using an online card designed to create awareness among players of their risk profile. It uses neuroimaging insights to analyze each player’s decisions, which increases the chances of early detection, unique risk markers, actionable advice, and unbiased results.
In addition to risk assessment for discovering at-risk problem gamblers, Mindway AI has also developed the functionality to track AML (anti-money laundering) transactions.
“This dual functionality in the same system is valuable to operators who need both, because they can perform it in one optimized system instead of two different systems,” Kjaergaard explained. “This is not necessarily the case with AML tracking systems.
“Based upon the preliminary interest we have received from operators; it gives every indication of being something of great interest and something that could be relevant for American operators.”
