
Is AI Targeting Young Sports Fans Into Sports Betting?
Clip: Season 2026 | 3m 24sVideo has Closed Captions
AI betting predictions spark debate over data use, targeting, and risks for young gamblers.
This hypothetical scenario explores how AI is being used to predict sports results and target users with betting prompts. It's raises big questions about data access, nonstop notifications, and how easily young people can get drawn into gambling. Watch the debate about whether AI is helping fans make choices, or pushing them toward risky behavior.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Funding for this program was provided in part by grants from The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation and by a grant from Anne Ray Foundation and by contributions from viewers like you. Thank you. Location furnished by The New York Historical.

Is AI Targeting Young Sports Fans Into Sports Betting?
Clip: Season 2026 | 3m 24sVideo has Closed Captions
This hypothetical scenario explores how AI is being used to predict sports results and target users with betting prompts. It's raises big questions about data access, nonstop notifications, and how easily young people can get drawn into gambling. Watch the debate about whether AI is helping fans make choices, or pushing them toward risky behavior.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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If you or someone you know is struggling with a gambling problem, help is available. The National Council on Problem Gambling provides a range of resources.Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipAlan Levy, you are the founder of PredictIt AI, a leading tech startup that brings the power of AI to tell the future, including the future of sporting events Fan Fuel's.
CEO has asked you to give a presentation about what AI is capable of.
- AI is gonna change everything about the way that people predict sports events and people predict future events in general because we can ingest almost infinite amounts of information much more than a single human being and give the FanFuel customers the best possible information so that they can make the most informed decision.
We are not saying that we're building a crystal ball, but we're not saying we're far from it.
- Lemme just get this straight.
You can take AI to predict almost anything.
You can predict what our customers, what our users are going to want.
- They can definitely do that.
And it's gonna be very, very important for users to understand not only how to interact with FanFuel, but also to be able to get the best quality information so that they can make the best predictions.
Because at the end of the day, that's what it is.
At the end of the day, information is power and the FanFuel.
Fans want the most power.
- Okay, but hold on a minute.
- Yes, - I hear that we're talking about perfecting gambling, but we're leaving out the idea of not gambling.
If we weren't focused on perfecting gambling and making it superstar, fantastic, maybe we could roll it back.
And then our son, when he is in his room looking at that $800, that wouldn't be offered to him on his phone.
He potentially say, - There goes my sister again.
There goes your sister there goes your sister.
Yeah, we, we fight a lot.
Mr.
Levy FanFuel's.
CEO says, I would like to pay you and PredictIt AI a bunch of money.
We'll give you access to all of our users', data betting histories, bank transactions, you name it.
And you'll predict for us all the games they might want to bet on when they'll have money in their bank accounts so that we can ping them with just the right notifications on their apps to encourage them to play.
We have a deal.
- We have a deal.
I think that it is the individual's choice to be responsible, and what we doing is we're providing the best information possible.
Information can never be the enemy.
So I think it's pretty naive to say that people wouldn't gamble.
I think that giving them the best opportunity and the best methodology and the best information is probably an ethical decision.
- It's not that they wouldn't gamble at all, but the fact that it's being offered to them with such accessibility in a way that has never been before.
Now it's everywhere 24 hours a day.
And so the fact that we're offering it in this perfect way, it's not that it's should they gamble or shouldn't they gamble, it's the way that it's being offered as opposed to so many other things that young people could be doing.
That's the issue.
- Jeremy and a lot of other young males are going through challenges that Tiki and Stephanie and I never face no longer do they have to go to the casino.
They got one in their pocket that's the casino.
And the technology means that FanFuel can track Jeremy literally in seconds.
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