Alexiei Dingli on how AI is rewriting, not replacing, iGaming roles

Is machine intelligence hollowing out roles in iGaming, or is the industry seeing more of a restructuring and reskilling exercise, with new roles blending machine speed and human creativity? Ramona Depares checks in with the experts to delve into what benefits and risks this perceived disruption brings with it.

According to a 2024 report by learning platform Mentessa, some 1.1 billion jobs are expected to be “radically transformed” by AI technology within the next decade. The iGaming industry is perfectly poised for this transformation – tech-forward, always looking for the next innovation, and famously not scared of change.

And we’re already seeing a shift, as traditional roles like content writers are evolving into AI content editors, while design positions increasingly require proficiency in AI tools such as Midjourney. The fear, especially in an industry like gaming, has always been that AI will replace human functions, particularly in roles like customer service, risk analysis, content and design, and game development. But as the situation evolves, it looks more like existing roles will evolve while new ones emerge.

I put the question to Prof. Alexiei Dingli, a Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta, with over 25 years of experience in the field of AI. He describes the mass popularisation of AI as having created “disruption”, rather than “wholesale destruction”. He notes that this is confirmed by the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2025 update, which predicts that automation will displace 92 million jobs by 2030 while creating about 170 million new ones.

“This is especially true in areas that blend human creativity with machine speed. What we are witnessing on the ground is a reshuffling of tasks within jobs – whether in call-centre chatbots that only escalate tricky cases to humans, or AI-assisted game studios that let artists iterate faster. Roles persist, yet their daily content shifts upward in value. There is less copy-paste, more judgment and relationship-building,” he elaborates, while referring to a controlled study by GitHub that showed how developers using Copilot finished coding tasks 55 per cent faster, while spending more effort on design decisions and code review.

“Artists and game designers are reporting a similar shift: the machine drafts, humans polish. Thus, tomorrow’s technologist looks less like a typist and more like an orchestral conductor – deciding which AI motif to keep, tweak or trash.”

Using the history of ATM machines as an example, Prof. Dingli illustrates how these did not eliminate banking jobs. Rather, they freed staff to provide personalised customer advice.

“AI is following the same pattern, provided companies invest in reskilling, rather than redundancy.”

He views reskilling as essential to counteract the potential risks associated with this shift in job roles, such as over-dependence on AI, and the erosion of critical thinking and creativity.

“These dangers are real. Over-reliance can hard-wire hidden biases into decisions, as happened with an early medical model that labelled pneumonia patients who suffered from asthma as low-risk because the training data reflected superior hospital care, not true prognosis. When people accept such outputs with no question, critical thinking dies. Leaders must therefore keep a human in the loop on call, mandate red-team testing and algorithmic impact assessments, while rewarding staff who challenge results. Cultivating AI literacy across the organisation ensures employees remain the ultimate sense-check, rather than becoming passive button-pushers,” he insists.

But is reskilling taking place, in reality? Prof. Dingli believes that the narrative is indeed becoming practice, at least where management allocates dedicated learning time.

“Malta’s Erasmus-funded DS4AIR programme offers free, self-paced digital-skills courses aimed at workers most vulnerable to automation, explicitly mirroring the World Economic Forum’s ‘Reskilling Revolution’ agenda. Where firms fall short, it is less about funding than about carving out the calendar space for staff to learn,” he says.

But it’s not only entry-level and middle-management roles that are changing – AI has also caused a shift in iGaming leadership styles, with gaming CEOs pairing AI-driven personalisation with rigorous harm-prevention controls.

“Conference agendas now feature sessions on AI-enabled marketing, fraud prediction and AI player protection analytics. The effective leader is one who can read a dashboard as confidently as a balance sheet, foster cross-functional teams of data scientists and compliance officers, and set a culture where algorithmic decisions remain transparent, fair and, crucially, with human oversight,” Prof Dingli notes.

This interview first appeared in the iGaming Capital 2026 edition. For more information on the iGaming Capital 2026 edition or on www.iGamingCapital.mt, get in touch via email on info@contenthouse.mt or on +356 2132 0713. Additionally, readers can visit the iGaming Capital portal at www.iGamingCapital.mt to stay updated on the latest developments in Malta’s iGaming industry.