Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care
Saturday, April 20, 2024
The Dark Side of AI in Mental Health
Friday, February 2, 2024
Young people turning to AI therapist bots
- Cost: Traditional therapy's expense and limited availability drive some towards bots, seen as cheaper and readily accessible.
- Stigma: Stigma associated with mental health might make bots a less intimidating first step compared to human therapists.
- Technology familiarity: Young people, comfortable with technology, find text-based interaction with bots familiar and less daunting than face-to-face sessions.
- Bias: Bots trained on potentially biased data might offer inaccurate or harmful advice, reinforcing existing prejudices.
- Qualifications: Lack of professional mental health credentials and oversight raises concerns about the quality of support provided.
- Limitations: Bots aren't replacements for human therapists. Complex issues or severe cases require professional intervention.
Monday, January 15, 2024
The man helping prevent suicide with Google adverts
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Chatbot therapy is risky. It’s also not useless
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Everything you need to know about artificial wombs
- The potential for artificial wombs to be used to create designer babies or to prolong the lives of fetuses with severe disabilities.
- The potential for artificial wombs to be used to exploit or traffick babies.
- The potential for artificial wombs to exacerbate existing social and economic inequalities.
Tuesday, July 18, 2023
How AI is learning to read the human mind
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
A Prosociality Paradox: How Miscalibrated Social Cognition Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Prosocial Action
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Growth of AI in mental health raises fears of its ability to run wild
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.