A Jon Stewart video clip recently went viral. In it, the comedian has excoriated leaders of the AI industry, including Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, for their vagueness in explaining their predictions about future jobs in an AI-led economy. The promises are big – an age of abundance, Elon Musk says – but lack any detail, such as what type of jobs there will be. The clip is worth watching, even if you don’t agree with Stewart’s lampooning.
The rapid implementation of AI in the economy has, of course, sparked a lot of dialogue about which job roles will be safe and which won’t. It is conceivable, for example, that we could have AI teachers or, at least, classroom assistants. Psychologists, doctors, lawyers and mathematicians have all, to varying degrees, been cited as roles that could, under certain circumstances, be replaced by AI. Other roles that involve manual labor may lag behind, as they may require advancements in robotics. But nothing is really off the table.
The question of AI’s role at the live casino
Yet, there are interesting discussions in areas where you might think that AI would be an easy fit. Take, for example, online casino croupiers. It’s a niche role, to be sure, but one that fits nicely into the debate. An online casino croupier, as the name suggests, is a casino dealer who will operate tables for online platforms. They are usually based in studios, accepting bets remotely. They have been a staple part of online casino entertainment since the 2010s.
Now, one the one hand, you might think that this is a job that is ripe for AI disruption. Instead of paying a human to deal the cards, roll the dice and spin the roulette wheels, an AI ‘avatar’ could do the job instead at a much lower cost. Yet, the whole concept needs a bit of context.
For a start, consider that the whole raison d’être for creating live dealer casino games online was a drive for authenticity. Casino operators wanted to recreate the sights, sounds and atmosphere of a real casino, and that meant bringing in real dealers. Virtual casino games already exist, broadly playing with the same incentives as live games. The difference is the delivery, and having human croupiers is a central part of that.
Casino boss says no to AI
A few months back, one of the executives of Evolution Gaming – the world’s largest supplier of live dealer games, providing games for major platforms like this one – claimed that his company would never employ AI croupiers, claiming that this would remove the authenticity that made this style of casino entertainment popular in the first place. However, it should be noted that he noted that rival companies were amenable to the idea.
Nevertheless, this arguably tells us something about a wider recognition that there is some pushback to the idea that we should replace jobs with AI because we can. You can apply this idea of authenticity to everything from creating music to people working as doormen at swanky hotels. People still crave human interaction. Indeed, consider some of the pushback to the ideas of virtual work that fermented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Remember when WFH was the future? And when the Metaverse was going to take over? These concepts have been largely rejected.
None of this means to say that AI won’t have an impact on the casino industry, nor does it contend that AI definitely won’t replace human croupiers. Yet, it does tell us that the question does not have a simple answer. Just because we can do something with AI doesn’t mean it will be universally implemented or accepted.
John Sargeant, writing on NeuFutur as Sargeant, is the founder and editor-in-chief of NeuFutur Magazine, where he has covered independent music, PC hardware, consumer tech, and gaming culture since 1998. With over 25 years of continuous digital publishing experience, he has written thousands of hands-on game and record reviews, conducted in-depth hardware field testing, and analyzed digital media monetization trends. His work prioritizes first-hand evaluation and long-term product testing.
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