Simon Lidzén, Fast Track: “AI is going to create better experiences for everyone”
In an interview with Focus Gaming News, Simon Lidzén, co-founder and CEO of Fast Track, explained why Singularity is such a key part of the company’s strategy and how artificial intelligence can help the industry approach personalisation from a new perspective.
Exclusive interview.- During the latest edition of iGB L!VE in London, Focus Gaming News sat down with Simon Lidzén, co-founder and CEO of Fast Track, to discuss the Singularity Model and Rewards, and to delve deeper into the biggest advantage of AI right now and the biggest misconception people still have about it.
In an interview with Focus Gaming News, Simon Lidzén, co-founder and CEO of Fast Track, explained why Singularity is such a key part of the company’s strategy and how artificial intelligence can help the industry approach personalisation from a new perspective.
Fast Track is built on the core ideas of Singularity and AI. In your own words, what does “Singularity” mean in the context of CRM, and why is it such a key part of your strategy?
We’ve been through a year now, during which a lot of our marketing efforts and much of what we’ve been discussing have centred on the new gamification product, Rewards. However, we’ve always been talking about Singularity in the CRM space. We do think that we need to get back to talking more about Singularity again, because everyone gets really excited when we talk about the future, especially about our role in it, what we’re doing from a research and development perspective, and how everything is going on.
When we think about our vision for Fast Track, it’s a digitalised, high-gaming industry and a self-learning digital platform. We don’t think of this just as self-optimising campaigns; we feel it’s about building a real beast that can take your CRM strategy, download your thoughts, put in everything that matters to you, and have a companion, a technology that can manifest that CRM strategy and grow on its own. It’s a huge challenge, so every single product that we are developing to get to the point of Singularity is about adding new pieces to the puzzle to make this work.
And when you’re constantly doing stuff that has never been done before, you’ve got so many things that you need to create that didn’t exist yet. In some cases, we have built relationships to complement our offering. For example, we have another stand here at iGB which is part of the Fast Track group – Greco, the Gameplay Risk Platform that works with identifying bonus abuse by players. This collaboration was very central to Singularity for us, enabling us, for example, to not award the wrong player with incentives.
Rewards also came to be because of Singularity, as we encountered another issue: when you have all the AI capabilities to use Fast Track’s platform to determine what to bonus, when to bonus, and how to elevate the player experience, you also need the promotional capabilities. That’s why we’re getting into gamification. So, we’re not really changing or stopping talking about something, but we are certainly going to talk more about the future and about Singularity, our view, what it means to the operator, to us as a business, and what we’re building and investing in. I think it’s exciting; everyone gets very excited about it.
“When you’re constantly doing stuff that has never been done before, you’ve got so many things that you need to create that didn’t exist yet.”
Simon Lidzén, co-founder & CEO of Fast Track.
You are one of the most passionate AI advocates I know, Simon. What do you see as the biggest advantage of AI right now? And what is the biggest misconception people still have about it?
There is a lot of AI assistance being rolled out right now to help us overcome certain processes that we are used to. But what happens when you start reflecting on whether you need the whole process in the first place? Why are we doing this? When you start looking outside the box, I think that’s probably the most exciting thing that might happen in personalisation, AI, and all of that.
We are still bound by certain “physics” in our way of seeing the world, which leads us to use AI in a certain way. But the reality is that we are soon going to question the whole system and rebuild it from scratch. If we think about personalisation, we can think about it in a new way, and maybe the platforms, tools, and the way we approach things might be completely different. For that reason, the operational process changes.
I’m a very optimistic person. So I believe that, by the end of it, AI is going to create better experiences for everyone. But we are going to go through a lot of changes in understanding what it looks like. I’m very excited about it, and I know which role I want to play and which role Fast Track wants to play in that. The future is… imagine being part of this, it’s amazing. I really love it.
