At any given time in Costa Rica, call center agents working in nondescript buildings located in communities like Rio Segundo and La Sabana take down bets placed by callers who may wager on a number of sporting events like games, matches, races, etc. These are Costa Rica’s sportsbooks, an industry that is heavily reliant on advanced computer algorithms to help them manage their operations, and which one day may write the content you read herein.

Antonio Moretti (not his real name) is a divorced middle-aged Italian-American man from Philadelphia who came to Costa Rica a few years ago after neighborhood friends extended him a business proposal. Mr. Moretti is now a partner in an online sports betting business that consists of a small office that doubles as a call center near La Sabana.

For all the grittiness associated with the world of online gaming and wagering, there is a fair amount of advanced computer technology that Mr. Moretti comes in contact with on a daily basis, particularly artificial intelligence (AI). Before Mr. Moretti goes to bed each night, he must do a fair amount of number crunching that consists of a dizzying amount of statistics, scores, formulas, percentages, variables, and other concepts that seem like a mathematician’s delight.

Mr. Moretti is not a mathematician, and although he is quite good with numbers he admits that he would be lost at setting the overnight line -an important and complex aspect of sports wagering– if it wasn’t for algorithmic software figuring out the odds for him. Mr. Moretti does not go into much detail about the software, which he learned to use upon his arrival to Costa Rica, other than mentioning something about proprietary aspects. He adds that the software comes up with odds according to data relating to risk management, business rules, movements, etc.

The last sentence above sounds more like something that an actuary working for INS might say, or maybe a trader in Wall Street. This should not surprise those working in the sportsbook industry, as the lines between financial trading and sports wagering are becoming somewhat blurred. According to a 2010 article in Wired Magazine the sportsbook at the M Resort Spa and Casino in Las Vegas is run by Cantor Gaming, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald -a respected name in the financial services industry of Wall Street.

Just like high-frequency trading in Wall Street is mostly conducted by computers trading against each other based on parameters set by humans, sportsbook lines can be set by software that makes odds. For the May 30^th NBA game between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat, for example, the software sets a moneyline of +346 -400 and a spread of +7 1/2 – 101 to -7 1/2 – 107 (these are not the actual numbers, explains Mr. Moretti). Based on these lines, the action at the call center will unfold over the next few hours and the pricing will be set. This is just one example of how AI performs a vital function for a somewhat obscure industry in Costa Rica, and Mr. Moretti will have one more brush with AI tonight.

From Calculating Odds to Writing News Media Content

Mr. Moretti confesses to a guilty pleasure. He likes to bet as well, but he takes his action elsewhere. His partners in the sportsbook have all agreed that they must treat it as a business that is all about “the vig” -short for the vigorish, the profitable percentage taken in every wagering transaction. Partners and employees are not allowed to wager at this sportsbook, which is why Mr. Moretti logs to a website that provides him with a narrative and stats of a recent game between the San Diego Padres and the Chicago Cubs.

The Chicago Cubs are Mr. Moretti’s favorite team to bet on, despite their century-long championship drought. The website that he visits to keep informed about the Cubs features a typical game summary that reads like it came from the sports section of a morning newspaper. Good news tonight: the Cubs beat the Padres 5-3, and the article accompanying the customary baseball stats describes how third baseman Mather had a huge game and their pitcher contributed with a go-ahead single. The article was not written by a sports reporter, it was written by an AI program developed by a company named StatSheet.

Mr. Moretti knows that what he is reading was written by a computer. He thinks is better that way; no chance of misspellings and factual errors. Companies like StatSheet and Narrative Science were recently profiled by Wired Magazine as part of a new algorithmic trend that is currently replacing journalists in some online news media publications. These are writing robots being employed by publishers like Forbes and others that do not make such information public. If you are used to reading online content, there is a good chance that you have already read content written by robots and don’t even know it.

Speaking to author Steven Levy for Wired, the co-founder of Narrative Science predicted that more than 90 percent of online news could be written by algorithms in 15 years, and within that time frame a computer could be awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

It is not too far-fetched to think that robots could be contributing content to The Costa Rica Star in the near future, and someone like Mr. Moretti, who deals with AI programs on a daily basis, would not mind that idea at all. In fact, explains Mr. Moretti, he is sure his partners here in Costa Rica would be interested in using algorithms that can write marketing content for their sportsbook.