8 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2023 From the Publisher It was great fun seeing everyone at the EL Congress in Šibenik, Croatia. It had been four years since the last big EL Congress trade-show cum conference so there was a lot of catching up to do. Congratulations to Arjan van’t Veer and Team EL and the Croatia Lottery for producing a fabulous event with spectacular receptions, great content, and a well-run tradeshow. Now, we look forward to NASPL’s annual trade-show/ conference in Milwaukee the end of October. Of course, we hope to see you all before then, at PGRI lottery Expo Nashville Sept. 11-13! We have all been reading about the transformative impact that Artificial Intelligence will have on everything – on the way we live and work, on the way business is conducted, that goods and services and software code that runs the world are produced, that information is captured, processed, and disseminated and even the way knowledge is produced and transformed into action. The advent of Generative AI in the form of ChatGPT (and Google’s Bard, and software programming tools Github and AlphaCode, and Dall-E 2 to translate text into images, and probably countless others in the development pipeline as we speak) has catapulted this one subset of AI (i.e. large language models that enable the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer that is the “GPT”) to be the current top-ofmind AI application. Some may think AI is mostly overhyped or not ready-for-prime-time. I am throwing down hard with those who think that this technological revolution is the real thing, that the impact will be much greater than any technological innovation that has preceded it, and that it will all unfold at an exponentially faster rate than any innovation in the history of the world. It was over thirty years ago that Geoffrey Moore wrote Crossing the Chasm in which he describes the gap in time between early-adopters of new technology and the mass-market deployment and acceptance of an innovation. Just looking at more recent history, for instance, it was decades before electricity and the automobile (both introduced in late 19th century) gained wide-spread use. Later, it took more than ten years for the ATM to go from initial launch in late 1960’s to widespread deployment in the early 1980’s. Likewise, small-business/decentralized computing from the mid 1970’s to the late 1980’s. The far more impactful innovation of the Internet took much less time, and newer technologies like the iPhone and virtual assistant technologies like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are taking even less time. Moore observed that the common perception has always been to over-estimate the short-term impact of innovation, but to underestimate the long-term impact. Hence the push-back from those who caution against overreacting to the hype of a new technology. Moore also predicted, and history has shown to be correct, that the timeline it takes for new technology to go from launch to widespread use is being compressed in a very big way. While Microsoft/OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a phenomenal technological breakthrough, it still is representative of the earliest stages of product development, and is prompting Google, Apple, IBM, Meta, and others to accelerate the commercialization of their own AI products and applications. The days when we could wind through a lengthy “chasm” of time while we figure things out and get our ducks in a row are long gone. It would appear that we can expect AI (and its subsets of Machine-Learning, Natural Language Processing, Expert and Autonomous Systems, Intelligent Personalization, Deep-Learning, Computerized Vision, Data Analytics, Virtual Assistance and Chatbots, Cybersecurity, etc. and countless more that we don’t even know about yet) to go from early-stage development to massive build-out in warp speed time. Others are much better than I at talking about the transformative impact of AI. Just have a conversation with ChatGPT to drill down on these, or any other topics, and be amazed at the power of this first-generation AI knowledge worker. PGRI’s goal is to focus on the intersection of AI and Lottery. As can be seen in our magazine, digital channels, and conferences, we try to push into the most cutting-edge forward-looking story angles while focusing on the range of lottery-specific topics like Retail Modernization, iLottery, Digitization, Marketing & Promotion, New Game Development, Regulatory Change, etc. Now I look forward to your guidance on how we might frame the issues and shape the dialogue to understand how AI is being, and will be, applied to transform the lottery playing experience. Paul Jason, Publisher Public Gaming International Magazine
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