Questions often lies around how artificial intelligence (A.I.) can be implemented and make impact to the mental health field. There are also many issues within the implementation of A.I. due to sensitive personal data being shared across multiple platforms.
I have written about A.I. and its implementation in the community services sector:
I have also written about A.I. and child protection:
In a recent survey completed amongst psychiatrists regarding the implementation of A.I. in Psychiatry:
- Only 4% of psychiatrists felt that future technology would make their jobs obsolete
- Only 17% believed technology is likely to replace a human’s role in providing empathetic care
- More women (48%) psychiatrists than men (35%) were uncertain that the benefits of AI and machine learning would outweigh the risks
- More US psychiatrists (46%) than those in other countries (32%) were uncertain that the benefits of future autonomous technology would outweigh the risks
- The majority of psychiatrists also indicated that future technology would be unlikely to replace physicians for complex tasks such as a mental status examination (67%), assessing the risk of violence (58%), and determining the need for hospitalization (55%).
To some conservatives, they might be afraid of the introduction of A.I. in the medical field because they may be afraid that it will take over their work. But I don’t believe so. I think it works as a compliment to the beautiful work they are already doing.
Recently I came across this new research:
In essence: “researchers are working to apply machine learning to psychiatry, with a speech-based mobile app that can categorise a patient’s mental health status as well as or better than a human can…develop machine learning technology able to detect day-to-day changes in speech that hint at mental health decline…For instance, sentences that don’t follow a logical pattern can be a critical symptom in schizophrenia. Shifts in tone or pace can hint at mania or depression. And memory loss can be a sign of both cognitive and mental health problems.”
The app asks the consumer to answer a 5–10mins series of questions by talking into their phone. Whilst questions about emotional states would be incorporated in the questioning. These data would then be compared to healthy individuals, in which assessors can then identify the subtle differences in the change of tone of the consumers and alert medical professionals to attend to these identified consumers.
This app is an example of how A.I. enhances human beings and societies instead of wiping the workforce away. I think we are very lucky to live through this technological revolution, where creativity and innovation drives more changes to humanity than ever. It’s pretty much an era where if you dare to dream, you can achieve it!
Are you ready to dream?
Credit: BecomingHuman By: Julian Wong
