Adam Poliak of the Bryn Mawr College, an assistant teacher for the treatment of natural language (NLP), analyzes research trends to understand the impacts of legalized sports betting in the United States
In 2018, the decision of the Supreme Court of Murphy v. NCAA has paved the way for states to legalize sports betting. A new study co-written by Bryn Mawr College Assistant IT teacher Adam Poliak noted that since this decision, the unprecedented push of sports betting, in particular online sports betting, has led to an increase in online research records linked to the game dependence. Jama internal medicine and directed by researchers from University of California San Diego Qualcomm Institute And the school of medicine, the study reveals the need for political and public health reforms to mitigate the risk of play.
The team collected data between January 1, 2016 and June 30, 2024, analyzing Google research trends with a mention of game and dependence, drug addict, anonymous or hotline. They found that research such that “am I addicted to the game” has accumulated 23% on a national scale, greater than the expected team, from Murphy c. NCAA.
Currently, 38 states have operational sports books, which has been a significant increase since 2017, when Nevada was the only state to legalize bets. The team also found that the total amount spent on sports betting increased from $ 4.9 billion in 2017 to 121.1 billion dollars in 2023, with 94% of bets in 2023 placed online. With the growing popularity and convenience of online game, Poliak hopes that these figures can raise awareness of the health consequences that result from the exposure to the normalization of sports betting.
“There must be more awareness of the real effects of online sports betting, because it is not only a problem, but a growing problem,” explains Poliak. “We need more warnings, education and advocacy on the dangers and the addictive nature of sports betting, as for smoking and tobacco consumption.”
Poliak and its co-authors recommend interventions in public health and policy, the increase in financing for game dependence services and improved advertising regulations for clinical training programs for health professionals, more solid guarantees for online sports books, broadcasting campaigns for public awareness and data sharing and current research collaborations.
Among the tools that researchers use in work is the treatment of natural language (PNL), which Poliak teaches in his first cycle laboratory in Bryn Mawr. “As this technology ripens, it opens the type of research that people in other areas can do; For example, people in public health can use data on social networks and research trends, ”explains Poliak. “How do you know what people vape for these days?” You could go to a Bodega and see what is on the shelves, or you can extract Reddit data to see what brands people are talking about. Social media and research open up the amounts of data and the different types of data that researchers can use, which will expand the types of questions that researchers can answer all areas. »»
One of the challenges of natural language treatment is the inherent biases that models learn from data, explains Poliak, explaining that models learn sets of large compiled data from human sources and the Internet. Poliak teaches his students to be aware of prejudices within models while exploiting the opportunities that support this revolutionary technology.
Playing a role in correcting biases in NLP research is one of the things Poliak hopes to do in Bryn Mawr.
“Computer science and technology are strongly dominated by men,” explains Poliak. “It’s really special to be in an institution where I teach the next generation of women leaders in the field and encouraging them to get out of their comfort zone.”
This semester, Poliak teaches Introduction to data science And IT seminar.