26-year-old Ramakrishna died by suicide after getting caught in a loop of online betting and losing huge amounts of money. Although this is a devastating case, it highlights the extreme consequences potentially awaiting a gambling addiction victim. In addition, as the digital age progresses, online betting becomes more accessible; especially during major sports events like the World Cup, sports betting has spread across the internet through advertisements. We must keep gambling away from people who are willing to bet or are vulnerable. Gambling content is often found in advertisements on websites that rely on advertising for income. With an automated tool, we can detect and block gambling related ads, protecting people from exposure to gambling.
In this day and age, one major contributor for increasing gamblers is advertising. For context, sports book operators have been actively spending money to advertise their sites. Back in 2018, the PASPA law that banned online sports betting was struck down by the US Supreme Court. From then on until 2023, sports book operators spent a total of roughly $2 billion on media advertising. Why? You may ask, sports book companies spend money to potentially reach customers and normalize gambling to them. In addition to major sports seasons happening, sports fans may be influenced by the wrong people and succumb to gambling. And while someone is enjoying the thrill of betting, an addiction can develop and worsen through every bet. Furthermore, many forms of gambling are likely in the long term favor of the dealer. During research at the University of San Diego, Professor Kenneth C. Diego claimed that out of 700,000 gamblers, only 4% made money out of gambling. Due to the low percentage of gamblers making money, the outcome wouldn’t be favorable and an addicted gambler might only go into more debt and be forced to sell their own assets to pay it off, creating financial hardship and regretful decisions that harm their family and themselves, with the worst case scenario being similar to Ramakrishna’s case, a tragic incident that started from an online betting site. What’s more heartbreaking than a man in debt is a kid suffering from financial issues.
While rehab centers are reliable to support people struggling with the addiction, my AI browser extension idea can integrate with existing adblocker systems, allowing to reduce sightings of gambling content. Simply by scanning for advertisements and filtering out gambling content, we can report them to an existing ad blocker, which the organization can update its website block list. This efficiently updates the blocklist, which also scales with the number of users using the integrated ad blocker. This is a win-win situation because ad blockers gain passive ad detection while the user is protected. As time passes, gambling ads will eventually become more rare, reducing accessibility and the odds of triggering someone’s urge to bet. However, there is a flaw in this proposal. AI may not be perfect, and it may falsely take down legit sports websites that are not gambling affiliated. However, we can train it to differentiate gambling sites from legit sports websites by adding a flagging system. The AI model flags websites based on suspicion, with the less suspicious websites being sent to a human agent for review. By using the results and a machine learning algorithm, the AI learns what’s a legit website and what’s not.
AI models passively learn from past experiences, study our habits, and automate tasks. Imagine using that AI as a silent guardian to provide a more friendly environment; keeping gambling ads away from vulnerable people and addicted gamblers before it’s too late. This can potentially be a mutually beneficial program where an AI optimizes its process in finding or recognizing certain content, while people receive protection from potentially harmful gambling content. The focus is not to eradicate gambling, but to protect those who are vulnerable or struggling to stop. Perhaps the internet’s focus would be completely switched away to a different topic by the next World Cup.
By Ngo Vinh Khang on September 08, 2026