Twitter Exec Defends Restoring Account That Shared Child Sex Abuse Material

Matt Novak

Forbes Magazine

Originally published 9 AUG 23

Executives at X, the company formerly known as Twitter, testified in front of an Australian Parliament hearing late Wednesday, and defended the restoration of an X account after it shared child sexual abuse material in late July. The incident attracted widespread attention because X owner Elon Musk personally intervened to reinstate the account after a violation that would normally result in a permanent ban from the social media platform.

Nick Pickles, the head of global government affairs at X, was asked about the incident by an Australian senator late Wednesday ET, early Thursday Australian local time, after Pickles first suggested there was a zero tolerance policy for child sex abuse material before seeming to contradict himself. Pickles said the offending account in question may have been sharing the content “out of outrage.”

“One of the challenges we see is, for example, people sharing this content out of outrage because they want to raise awareness of an issue and see something in the media,” Pickles testified, according to an audio livestream.

“So if there are circumstances where someone shares content but, under review, we decide the appropriate remediation is to remove the content but not the user,” Pickles continued.

There’s nothing in the X terms of service that says it’s okay to share child sexual abuse material if a user is doing it because they’re outraged over the images or looking to “raise awareness.” It’s generally understood that sharing child sex abuse materials, regardless of intent, is not only a federal crime in the U.S. and Australia, but re-victimizes the child.

The information is here.

The article highlights how this decision contradicts ethical principles and moral standards, as sharing such harmful content not only violates the law but also goes against the norms of safeguarding vulnerable individuals, especially children, from harm. Twitter's move to restore the account in question raises concerns about their commitment to combatting online exploitation and maintaining a safe platform for users.

By reinstating an account associated with child sexual abuse material, Twitter appears to have disregarded the severity of the content and its implications. This decision not only undermines trust in the platform but also reflects poorly on the company's dedication to maintaining a responsible and accountable online environment. Critics argue that Twitter's actions in this case highlight a lack of proper content moderation and an insufficient understanding of the gravity of such unethical behavior.

The article sheds light on the potential consequences of platforms not taking immediate and decisive action against users who engage in illegal and immoral activities. This situation serves as a reminder of the broader challenges social media platforms face in balancing issues of free expression with the responsibility to prevent harm and protect users, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

This article points out the company's total and complete failure to uphold ethical and moral standards.

Shake-up at top psychiatric institute following suicide in clinical trial

Brendan Borrell

Spectrum News

Originally posted 31 July 23

Here are two excerpts:

The audit and turnover in leadership comes after the halting of a series of clinical trials conducted by Columbia psychiatrist Bret Rutherford, which tested whether the drug levodopa — typically used to treat Parkinson’s disease — could improve mood and mobility in adults with depression.

During a double-blind study that began in 2019, a participant in the placebo group died by suicide. That study was suspended prior to completion, according to an update posted on ClinicalTrials.gov in 2022.

Two published reports based on Rutherford’s pilot studies have since been retracted, as Spectrum has previously reported. The National Institute of Mental Health has terminated Rutherford’s trials and did not renew funding of his research grant or K24 Midcareer Award.

Former members of Rutherford’s laboratory describe it as a high-pressure environment that often put publications ahead of study participants. “Research is important, but not more so than the lives of those who participate in it,” says Kaleigh O’Boyle, who served as clinical research coordinator there from 2018 to 2020.

Although Rutherford’s faculty page is still active, he is no longer listed in the directory at Columbia University, where he was associate professor, and the voicemail at his former number says he is no longer checking it. He did not respond to voicemails and text messages sent to his personal phone or to emails sent to his Columbia email address, and Cantor would not comment on his employment status.

The circumstances around the suicide remain unclear, and the institute has previously declined to comment on Rutherford’s retractions. Veenstra-VanderWeele confirmed that he is the new director but did not respond to further questions about the situation.

(cut)

In January 2022, the study was temporarily suspended by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, following the suicide. It is unknown whether that participant had been taking any antidepressant medication prior to the study.

Four of Rutherford’s published studies were subsequently retracted or corrected for issues related to how participants taking antidepressants at enrollment were handled.

One retraction notice published in February indicates tapering could be challenging and that the researchers did not always stick to the protocol. One-third of the participants taking antidepressants were unable to successfully taper off of them.

The info is here.

Note: The article serves as a cautionary tale about the risks of clinical trials. While clinical trials can be a valuable way to test new drugs and treatments, they also carry risks. Participants in clinical trials may be exposed to experimental drugs that have not been fully tested, and they may experience side effects that are not well-understood.  Ethical researchers must follow guidelines and report accurate results.

Top Arkansas psychiatrist accused of falsely imprisoning patients and Medicaid fraud

Laura Strickler & Stephanie Gosk

NBCnews.com

Originally posted July 23, 2023

Here is an excerpt:

The man who led the unit at the time, Dr. Brian Hyatt, was one of the most prominent psychiatrists in Arkansas and the chairman of the board that disciplines physicians. But he’s now under investigation by state and federal authorities who are probing allegations ranging from Medicaid fraud to false imprisonment.

VanWhy’s release marked the second time in two months that a patient was released from Hyatt’s unit only after a sheriff’s deputy showed up with a court order, according to court records.

“I think that they were running a scheme to hold people as long as possible, to bill their insurance as long as possible before kicking them out the door, and then filling the bed with someone else,” said Aaron Cash, a lawyer who represents VanWhy.

VanWhy and at least 25 other former patients have sued Hyatt, alleging that they were held against their will in his unit for days and sometimes weeks. And Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office has accused Hyatt of running an insurance scam, claiming to treat patients he rarely saw and then billing Medicaid at “the highest severity code on every patient,” according to a search warrant affidavit.

As the lawsuits piled up, Hyatt remained chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board. But he resigned from the board in late May after Drug Enforcement Administration agents executed a search warrant at his private practice. 

“I am not resigning because of any wrongdoing on my part but so that the Board may continue its important work without delay or distraction,” he wrote in a letter. “I will continue to defend myself in the proper forum against the false allegations being made against me.”

Northwest Medical Center in Springdale “abruptly terminated” Hyatt’s contract in May 2022, according to the attorney general’s search warrant affidavit. 

In April, the hospital agreed to pay $1.1 million in a settlement with the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office. Northwest Medical Center could not provide sufficient documentation that justified the hospitalization of 246 patients who were held in Hyatt’s unit, according to the attorney general’s office. 

As part of the settlement, the hospital denied any wrongdoing.

The info is here.

Supervisees’ Perspectives of Inadequate, Harmful, and Exceptional Clinical Supervision: Are We Listening?

Hutman, H., Ellis, M. V., et al (2023).

The Counseling Psychologist, 001100002311725.

https://doi.org/10.1177/00110000231172504

Abstract

Supervisees’ experiences in supervision vary remarkably. To capture such variability, Ellis and colleagues offered a framework for understanding and assessing inadequate, harmful, and exceptional supervision. Although their framework was supported, it did not offer a nuanced understanding of these supervision experiences. Using consensual qualitative research–modified, this study sought to obtain a rich description of inadequate, harmful, and exceptional supervision. Participants (N = 135) were presented with definitions and provided responses (n = 156) to open-ended questions describing their inadequate (n = 63), harmful (n = 30), and/or exceptional (n = 63) supervision experiences. Supervisees reporting harmful experiences described supervisors as neglectful and callous, whereas inadequate supervision reflected inappropriate feedback, unavailability, and unresponsiveness. Conversely, exceptional supervision involved safety, clinical paradigm shifts, and modeling specific techniques or theories. Implications for supervision research, theory, and practice are discussed.

 Significance of the Scholarship to the Public

We identified themes from trainees’ descriptions of their inadequate, harmful, and exceptional experiences in clinical supervision. The findings offer a nuanced understanding of supervisees’ lived experiences,

illustrating how clinical supervisors went awry or went above and beyond, and suggesting strategies for promoting exceptional supervision and preventing harmful and inadequate supervision.

Here is a summary

Background: Clinical supervision is a critical component of professional development for mental health professionals. However, not all supervision is created equal. Some supervision can be inadequate, harmful, or exceptional.

Research question: The authors of this article investigated supervisees' perspectives of inadequate, harmful, and exceptional clinical supervision.

Methods: The authors conducted a qualitative study with 135 supervisees. They asked supervisees to describe their experiences of inadequate, harmful, and exceptional supervision.

Results: The authors found that supervisees' experiences of inadequate, harmful, and exceptional supervision varied widely. However, there were some common themes that emerged. For example, supervisees who experienced inadequate supervision often felt unsupported, neglected, and judged. Supervisees who experienced harmful supervision often felt traumatized, humiliated, and disempowered. Supervisees who experienced exceptional supervision often felt supported, challenged, and empowered.

Conclusions: The authors concluded that supervisees' experiences of clinical supervision can have a profound impact on their professional development. They suggest that we need to listen to supervisees' experiences of supervision and to take steps to ensure that all supervisees receive high-quality supervision.

How AI is learning to read the human mind

Nicola Smith

The Telegraph

Originally posted 23 May 2023

Here is an excerpt:

‘Brain rights’

But he warned that it could also be weaponised and used for military applications or for nefarious purposes to extract information from people.

“We are on the brink of a crisis from the point of view of mental privacy,” he said. “Humans are defined by their thoughts and their mental processes and if you can access them then that should be the sanctuary.”

Prof Yuste has become so concerned about the ethical implications of advanced neurotechnology that he co-founded the NeuroRights Foundation to promote “brain rights” as a new form of human rights.

The group advocates for safeguards to prevent the decoding of a person’s brain activity without consent, for protection of a person’s identity and free will, and for the right to fair access to mental augmentation technology.

They are currently working with the United Nations to study how human rights treaties can be brought up to speed with rapid progress in neurosciences, and raising awareness of the issues in national parliaments.

In August, the Human Rights Council in Geneva will debate whether the issues around mental privacy should be covered by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one of the most significant human rights treaties in the world.

The gravity of the task was comparable to the development of the atomic bomb, when scientists working on atomic energy warned the UN of the need for regulation and an international control system of nuclear material to prevent the risk of a catastrophic war, said Prof Yuste.

As a result, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created and is now based in Vienna.

The info is here.

Santa Monica’s Headspace Health laid off dozens of therapists. Their patients don’t know where they went

Jaimie Ding

The Los Angeles Times

Originally posted 7 July 23

When Headspace Health laid off 33 of its therapists June 29, patients were told their providers had left the platform.

What they didn’t know was their therapists had lost their jobs. And they suddenly had no way to contact them.

Several therapists who were let go from Headspace, the Santa Monica meditation app and remote mental health care company, have raised alarm over their treatment and that of their patients after the companywide layoff of 181 total employees, which amounts to 15% of the workforce.

After the layoffs were announced in the morning without warning, these therapists said they immediately lost access to their patient care systems. Appointments, they said, were canceled without explanation, potentially causing irreparable harm to their patients and forcing them to violate the ethical guidelines of their profession.

One former therapist, who specializes in working with the LGBTQ+ community, said one of his clients had just come out in a session the day before he lost his job. The therapist requested anonymity because he was still awaiting severance from Headspace and feared retribution.

“I’m the first person they’ve ever talked to about it,” he said. “They’re never going back to therapy. They just had the first person she talked to about it abandon them.”

He didn’t know he had been laid off until 10 minutes after his first appointment was supposed to start and he had been unable to log into the system.

The info is here.

Some thoughts and analysis from me.  There are clear ethical and legal concerns here.

Abandoning patients: Headspace Health did not provide patients with any notice or information about where their therapists had gone. This is a violation of the ethical principle of fidelity, which requires healthcare providers to act in the best interests of their patients. It also leaves patients feeling abandoned and without a source of care.

Potential for harm to patients: The sudden loss of a therapist can be disruptive and stressful for patients, especially those who are in the middle of treatment. This could lead to relapses, increased anxiety, or other negative consequences. In more extreme, but realistic cases, it could even lead to suicide.

In addition to the ethical and legal problems outlined above, the article also raises questions about the quality of care that patients can expect from Headspace Health. If the company is willing to abruptly lay off therapists without providing any notice or information to patients, it raises concerns about how they value the well-being of their patients. It also raises questions about the company's commitment to providing quality care.  Headspace may believe itself to be a tech company, but it is a healthcare company subject to many rules, regulations, and standards.

Predictable, preventable medical errors kill thousands yearly. Is it getting any better?

Karen Weintraub

USAToday.com

Originally posted 3 May 23

Here are two excerpts:

A 2017 study put the figure at over 250,000 a year, making medical errors the nation's third leading cause of death at the time. There are no more recent figures.

But the pandemic clearly worsened patient safety, with Leapfrog's new assessment showing increases in hospital-acquired infections, including urinary tract and drug-resistant staph infections as well as infections in central lines ‒ tubes inserted into the neck, chest, groin, or arm to rapidly provide fluids, blood or medications. These infections spiked to a 5-year high during the pandemic and remain high.

"Those are really terrible declines in performance," Binder said.

Patient safety: 'I've never ever, ever seen that'

Not all patient safety news is bad. In one study published last year, researchers examined records from 190,000 patients discharged from hospitals nationwide after being treated for a heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia or major surgery. Patients saw far fewer bad events following treatment for those four conditions, as well as for adverse events caused by medications, hospital-acquired infections, and other factors.

It was the first study of patient safety that left Binder optimistic. "This was improvement and I've never ever, ever seen that," she said.

(cut)

On any given day now, 1 of every 31 hospitalized patients acquires an infection while hospitalized, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This costs health care systems at least $28.4 billion each year and accounts for an additional $12.4 billion from lost productivity and premature deaths.

"That blew me away," said Shaunte Walton, system director of Clinical Epidemiology & Infection Prevention at UCLA Health. Electronic tools can help, but even with them, "there's work to do to try to operationalize them," she said.

The patient experience also slipped during the pandemic. According to Leapfrog's latest survey, patients reported declines in nurse communication, doctor communication, staff responsiveness, communication about medicine and discharge information.

Boards and leadership teams are "highly distracted" right now with workforce shortages, new payment systems, concerns about equity and decarbonization, said Dr. Donald Berwick, president emeritus and senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The info is here.

Why some mental health professionals avoid self-care

Dattilio, F. M. (2023).

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 

91(5), 251–253.

https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000818

Abstract

This article briefly discusses reasons why some mental health professionals are resistant to self-care. These reasons include the savior complex, avoidance, and lack of collegial assiduity. Several proposed solutions are offered.

Here is an excerpt:

Savior Complex

One hypothesis used to explain professionals’ resistance is what some refer to as a “savior complex.” Certain MHPs may be engaging in the cognitive distortion that it is their duty to save as many people from suffering and demise as they can and in turn need to sacrifice their own psychological welfare for those facing distress. MHPs may be skewed in their thinking that they are also invulnerable to psychological and other stressors. Inherent in this distortion is their fear of being viewed as weak or ineffective, and as a result, they overcompensate by attempting to be stronger than others. This type of thinking may also involve a defense mechanism that develops early in their professional lives and emerges during the course of their work in the field. This may stem from preexisting components of their personality dynamics. 

Another reason may be that the extreme rewards that professionals experience from helping others in such a desperate state of need serve as a euphoric experience for them that can be addictive. In essence, the “high” that they obtain from helping others often spurs them on.

Avoidance

Another less complicated explanation for MHPs’ blindness to their own vulnerabilities may be their strong desire to avoid admitting to their own weaknesses and sense of vulnerability. The defense mechanism of rationalization that they are stronger and healthier than everyone else may embolden them to push on even when there are visible signs to others of the stress in their lives that is compromising their functioning. 

Avoidance is also a way of sidestepping the obvious and putting it off until later. This may be coupled with the need that has increased, particularly with the recent pandemic that has intensified the demand for mental health services.

Denial

The dismissal of MHPs’ own needs or what some may term as, “denial” is a deeper aspect that goes hand-in-hand with cognitive distortions that develop with MHPs, but involve a more complex level of blindness to the obvious (Bearse et al., 2013). It may also serve as a way for professionals to devalue their own emotional and psychological challenges. 

Denial may also stem from an underlying fear of being determined as incapacitated or not up to the challenge by their colleagues and thus prohibited from returning to their work or having to face limitations or restrictions. It can sometimes emanate from the fear of being reported as having engaged in unethical behavior by not seeking assistance sooner. This is particularly so with cases of MHPs who have become involved with illicit drug or alcohol abuse or addiction. 

Most ethical principles mandate that MHPs strive to remain cognizant of the potential effects that their work has on their own physical and mental health status while they are in the process of treating others and to recognize when their ability to be effective has been compromised. 

Last, in some cases, MHPs’ denial can even be a response to genuine and accurately perceived expectations in a variety of work contexts where they do not have control over their schedules. This may occur more commonly with facilities or institutions that do not support the disclosure of vulnerability and stress. It is for the aforementioned reasons that the American and Canadian Psychological Associations as well as other mental health organizations have mandated special education on this topic in graduate training programs (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Maranzan et al., 2018).

Lack of Collegial Assiduity

A final reason may involve a lack of collegial assiduity, where fellow MHPs observe their colleagues enduring signs of stress but fail to confront the individual of concern and alert them to the obvious. It is often very awkward and uncomfortable for a colleague to address this issue and risk rebuke or a negative outcome. As a result, they simply avoid it altogether, thus leaving the issue of concern unaddressed.

The article is paywalled here, which is a complete shame.  We need more access to self-care resources.

We need to examine the beliefs of today’s tech luminaries

Anjana Ahuja

Financial Times

Originally posted 10 MAY 23

People who are very rich or very clever, or both, sometimes believe weird things. Some of these beliefs are captured in the acronym Tescreal. The letters represent overlapping futuristic philosophies — bookended by transhumanism and longtermism — favoured by many of AI’s wealthiest and most prominent supporters.

The label, coined by a former Google ethicist and a philosopher, is beginning to circulate online and usefully explains why some tech figures would like to see the public gaze trained on fuzzy future problems such as existential risk, rather than on current liabilities such as algorithmic bias. A fraternity that is ultimately committed to nurturing AI for a posthuman future may care little for the social injustices committed by their errant infant today.

As well as transhumanism, which advocates for the technological and biological enhancement of humans, Tescreal encompasses extropianism, a belief that science and technology will bring about indefinite lifespan; singularitarianism, the idea that an artificial superintelligence will eventually surpass human intelligence; cosmism, a manifesto for curing death and spreading outwards into the cosmos; rationalism, the conviction that reason should be the supreme guiding principle for humanity; effective altruism, a social movement that calculates how to maximally benefit others; and longtermism, a radical form of utilitarianism which argues that we have moral responsibilities towards the people who are yet to exist, even at the expense of those who currently do.

(cut, and the ending)

Gebru, along with others, has described such talk as fear-mongering and marketing hype. Many will be tempted to dismiss her views — she was sacked from Google after raising concerns over energy use and social harms linked to large language models — as sour grapes, or an ideological rant. But that glosses over the motivations of those running the AI show, a dazzling corporate spectacle with a plot line that very few are able to confidently follow, let alone regulate.

Repeated talk of a possible techno-apocalypse not only sets up these tech glitterati as guardians of humanity, it also implies an inevitability in the path we are taking. And it distracts from the real harms racking up today, identified by academics such as Ruha Benjamin and Safiya Noble. Decision-making algorithms using biased data are deprioritising black patients for certain medical procedures, while generative AI is stealing human labour, propagating misinformation and putting jobs at risk.

Perhaps those are the plot twists we were not meant to notice.

The article is here.

Resolving content moderation dilemmas between free speech and harmful misinformation

Kozyreva, A., Herzog, S. M., et al. (2023). 

PNAS of US, 120(7).

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2210666120

Abstract

In online content moderation, two key values may come into conflict: protecting freedom of expression and preventing harm. Robust rules based in part on how citizens think about these moral dilemmas are necessary to deal with this conflict in a principled way, yet little is known about people’s judgments and preferences around content moderation. We examined such moral dilemmas in a conjoint survey experiment where US respondents (N = 2, 564) indicated whether they would remove problematic social media posts on election denial, antivaccination, Holocaust denial, and climate change denial and whether they would take punitive action against the accounts. Respondents were shown key information about the user and their post as well as the consequences of the misinformation. The majority preferred quashing harmful misinformation over protecting free speech. Respondents were more reluctant to suspend accounts than to remove posts and more likely to do either if the harmful consequences of the misinformation were severe or if sharing it was a repeated offense. Features related to the account itself (the person behind the account, their partisanship, and number of followers) had little to no effect on respondents’ decisions. Content moderation of harmful misinformation was a partisan issue: Across all four scenarios, Republicans were consistently less willing than Democrats or independents to remove posts or penalize the accounts that posted them. Our results can inform the design of transparent rules for content moderation of harmful misinformation.

Significance

Content moderation of online speech is a moral minefield, especially when two key values come into conflict: upholding freedom of expression and preventing harm caused by misinformation. Currently, these decisions are made without any knowledge of how people would approach them. In our study, we systematically varied factors that could influence moral judgments and found that despite significant differences along political lines, most US citizens preferred quashing harmful misinformation over protecting free speech. Furthermore, people were more likely to remove posts and suspend accounts if the consequences of the misinformation were severe or if it was a repeated offense. Our results can inform the design of transparent, consistent rules for content moderation that the general public accepts as legitimate.

Discussion

Content moderation is controversial and consequential. Regulators are reluctant to restrict harmful but legal content such as misinformation, thereby leaving platforms to decide what content to allow and what to ban. At the heart of policy approaches to online content moderation are trade-offs between fundamental values such as freedom of expression and the protection of public health. In our investigation of which aspects of content moderation dilemmas affect people’s choices about these trade-offs and what impact individual attitudes have on these decisions, we found that respondents’ willingness to remove posts or to suspend an account increased with the severity of the consequences of misinformation and whether the account had previously posted misinformation. The topic of the misinformation also mattered—climate change denial was acted on the least, whereas Holocaust denial and election denial were acted on more often, closely followed by antivaccination content. In contrast, features of the account itself—the person behind the account, their partisanship, and number of followers—had little to no effect on respondents’ decisions. In sum, the individual characteristics of those who spread misinformation mattered little, whereas the amount of harm, repeated offenses, and type of content mattered the most.

The research is here.

The role of attention in decision-making under risk in gambling disorder: an eye-tracking study

Hoven, M., Hirmas, A., Engelmann, J. B., 

& van Holst, R. (2022, June 30).

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/fxd3m

Abstract

Gambling disorder (GD) is a behavioural addiction characterized by impairments in decision-making, favouring risk- and reward-prone choices. One explanatory factor for this behaviour is a deviation in attentional processes, as increasing evidence indicates that GD patients show an attentional bias toward gambling stimuli. However, previous attentional studies have not directly investigated attention during risky decision-making. 25 patients with GD and 27 healthy matched controls (HC) completed a mixed gambles task combined with eye-tracking to investigate attentional biases for potential gains versus losses during decision-making under risk. Results indicate that compared to HC, GD patients gambled more and were less loss averse. GD patients did not show a direct attentional bias towards gains (or relative to losses). Using a recent (neuro)economics model that considers average attention and trial-wise deviations in average attention, we conducted fine-grained exploratory analyses of the attentional data. Results indicate that the average attention in GD patients moderated the effect of gain value on gambling choices, whereas this was not the case for HC. GD patients with high average attention for gains started gambling at less high gain values. A similar trend-level effect was found for losses, where GD patients with high average attention for losses stopped gambling with lower loss values. This study gives more insight into how attentional processes in GD play a role in gambling behaviour, which could have implications for the development of future treatments focusing on attentional training or for the development of interventions that increase the salience of losses.

From the Discussion section

We extend the current literature by investigating the role of attention in risky decision-making using eye-tracking, which has been underexplored in GD thus far. Consistent with previous studies in HCs, subjects’ overall relative attention toward gains decreased in favor of attention toward losses when  loss  values  increased.  We  did not find group differences in attention to either  gains or losses, suggesting no direct attentional biases in GD. However, while HCs increased their attention to gains with higher gain values, patients with GD did not. Moreover, while patients with GD displayed lower loss aversion, they did not show less attention to losses, rather, in both groups, increased trial-by-trial attention to losses resulted in less gambling.

The question arises whether attention modulates the effect of gains and losses on choice behavior differently in GD relative to controls. Our exploratory analyses that differentiated between two different channels of attention indeed indicated that the effect of gain value on gambling choices was modulated by the amount of average attention on gains in GD only. In other words, patients with GD who focused more on gains exhibited a greater gambling propensity at relatively low gain values. Notably, the strength of the effect of gain value on choice only significantly differed at average and high levels of attention to gains between groups, while patients with GD and HCs with relatively low levels of average attention to gains did not differ. Moreover, patients with GD who had relatively more average attention to losses showed a reduction in gambling propensity at relatively lower loss values, but note that this was at trend level.  Since  average  attention  relates  to  goal-directed or top-down attention, this measure likely reflects one’s preferences and beliefs.  Hence,  the  current  results suggest  that  gambling  choices  in  patients  with GD, relative to HCs are more  influenced by their preferences for gains. Future studies are needed to verify if and how top-down attentional processes affect decision-making in GD.

The research is here.

Editor's note: Apparently, GD focusing primarily on gains continue to gamble.  GD and HC who focus on losses are more likely to stop.  Therefore, psychologists treating people with impulse control difficulties may want to help patient's focus on potential losses/harm, as opposed to imagined gains.

Growth of AI in mental health raises fears of its ability to run wild

Sabrina Moreno

Axios.com

Originally posted 9 MAR 23

Here's how it begins:

The rise of AI in mental health care has providers and researchers increasingly concerned over whether glitchy algorithms, privacy gaps and other perils could outweigh the technology's promise and lead to dangerous patient outcomes.

Why it matters: As the Pew Research Center recently found, there's widespread skepticism over whether using AI to diagnose and treat conditions will complicate a worsening mental health crisis.

• Mental health apps are also proliferating so quickly that regulators are hard-pressed to keep up.
• The American Psychiatric Association estimates there are more than 10,000 mental health apps circulating on app stores. Nearly all are unapproved.

What's happening: AI-enabled chatbots like Wysa and FDA-approved apps are helping ease a shortage of mental health and substance use counselors.

• The technology is being deployed to analyze patient conversations and sift through text messages to make recommendations based on what we tell doctors.
• It's also predicting opioid addiction risk, detecting mental health disorders like depression and could soon design drugs to treat opioid use disorder.

Driving the news: The fear is now concentrated around whether the technology is beginning to cross a line and make clinical decisions, and what the Food and Drug Administration is doing to prevent safety risks to patients.

• KoKo, a mental health nonprofit, recently used ChatGPT as a mental health counselor for about 4,000 people who weren't aware the answers were generated by AI, sparking criticism from ethicists.
• Other people are turning to ChatGPT as a personal therapist despite warnings from the platform saying it's not intended to be used for treatment.

The info is here.

Divide and Rule? Why Ethical Proliferation is not so Wrong for Technology Ethics.

Llorca Albareda, J., Rueda, J.

Philos. Technol. 36, 10 (2023).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-023-00609-8

Abstract

Although the map of technology ethics is expanding, the growing subdomains within it may raise misgivings. In a recent and very interesting article, Sætra and Danaher have argued that the current dynamic of sub-specialization is harmful to the ethics of technology. In this commentary, we offer three reasons to diminish their concern about ethical proliferation. We argue first that the problem of demarcation is weakened if we attend to other sub-disciplines of technology ethics not mentioned by these authors. We claim secondly that the logic of sub-specializations is less problematic if one does adopt mixed models (combining internalist and externalist approaches) in applied ethics. We finally reject that clarity and distinction are necessary conditions for defining sub-fields within ethics of technology, defending the porosity and constructive nature of ethical disciplines.

Conclusion

Sætra and Danaher have initiated a necessary discussion about the increasing proliferation of neighboring sub-disciplines in technology ethics. Although we do not share their concern, we believe that this debate should continue in the future. Just as some subfields have recently been consolidated, others may do the same in the coming decades. The possible emergence of novel domain-specific technology ethics (say Virtual Reality Ethics) suggests that future proposals will point to as yet unknown positive and negative aspects of this ethical proliferation. In part, the creation of new sub-disciplines will depend on the increasing social prominence of other emerging and future technologies. The map of technology ethics thus includes uncharted waters and new subdomains to discover. This makes ethics of technology a fascinatingly lively and constantly evolving field of knowledge.

The info is here.