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A therapy chatbot for depression

businessinsider.fr

11–20 of 77 posts

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#11

Why not develop like... a chatroom... Reminds me of the story about robots in old folks homes. Why not just have people to keep people company.

That's actually an awesome way to get someone to stay participating! Basically each would conspire to keep the user in the discussion! I'm down to build it if anyone wants to collaborate ;)

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#13
There seems to be a new push for technological problems to social illnesses, and it consistently boggles my mind how so many smart "experts" really think people engaging more with computers/phones/AI instead of, you know, engaging more with actual people will solve any kind of social ill.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#14

There seems to be a new push for technological problems to social illnesses, and it consistently boggles my mind how so many smart "experts" really think people engaging more with computers/phones/AI instead of, you know, engaging more with actual people will solve any kind of social ill.

A decent CBT therapist can charge $150+ per hour, and personal change can take years of constant, ongoing effort.

For most people right now, it's going to be an app or no treatment at all, particularly if for people who are only mildly impaired by their distress.

Besides, it's not an either/or proposition. Personally, I don't think that chatbots are all that useful (I've been building them as a large part of my job for a year), but I can see interactive CBT/DBT reminders/journals/checklists as being a very powerful tool.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#15
This is an excellent idea, but their loose stance on privacy doesn't seem to line up with the intended field. Even a cursory look over their privacy policy raises questions (third party marketing, data in the event of a sale/acquisition). As for Messenger, they merely provide a link to Facebook's privacy policy.

I wish it outlined, in plain language, how private (or not) the transcripts of my chat data are and the retention policies associated with said data.

http://woebot.io/privacy

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#16
Feeding this data to Facebook, a company already known to perform unethical psychological experiments on users without consent, is beyond stupid. If the people behind this are aware of Facebook's history and practices, I'd consider it malicious to choose to expose depressed people to their platform.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#17
You can easily fool people into thinking they're talking with a person even though they're talking with a machine. But I wonder, can you do the same if they know they're talking with a machine? Or even, could you make yourself feel a program is human?

Simpler question: with a sufficiently-smart story generator, could you enjoy it if you knew it was procedurally generated? I feel that I couldn't. But I'd love to be wrong about that.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#18

There seems to be a new push for technological problems to social illnesses, and it consistently boggles my mind how so many smart "experts" really think people engaging more with computers/phones/AI instead of, you know, engaging more with actual people will solve any kind of social ill.

A decent CBT therapist can charge $150+ per hour, and personal change can take years of constant, ongoing effort. For most people right now, it's going to be an app or no treatment at all, particularly if for people who are only mildly impaired by their distress. Besides, it's not an either/or proposition. Personally, I don't think that chatbots are all that useful (I've been building them as a large part of my job f…

This is the right idea; it isn't about digitally replacing treatment. It's entirely about augmenting it.

This kind of technology in medicine is about enabling human doctors to treat patients better with more (hopefully meaningful) data points at their fingertips. You might be surprised how far behind the medical industry is when it comes to reaching out to the smartphone generation.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#19

Why not develop like... a chatroom... Reminds me of the story about robots in old folks homes. Why not just have people to keep people company.

> Why not just have people to keep people company.

This has actually been tried in the Netherlands, apparently with great success. University students can live rent-free in a retirement community on the condition that they spend time with the residents.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/dutch-retirement-home-of...

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#20

There seems to be a new push for technological problems to social illnesses, and it consistently boggles my mind how so many smart "experts" really think people engaging more with computers/phones/AI instead of, you know, engaging more with actual people will solve any kind of social ill.

A decent CBT therapist can charge $150+ per hour, and personal change can take years of constant, ongoing effort. For most people right now, it's going to be an app or no treatment at all, particularly if for people who are only mildly impaired by their distress. Besides, it's not an either/or proposition. Personally, I don't think that chatbots are all that useful (I've been building them as a large part of my job f…

Something isn't adding up here... if this is supposed to be supplemental therapy to talking with an actual human, but instead the actual human part is nixed and it is used as the entirety of therapy (i.e. outside of it's prescribed and tested usage) are we not worried about the negative externalities of replacing human contact with machines for curing social ills?

That's not even touching where you've just pointed out that we're essentially now decreeing that poor people get to talk to machines and rich people get to talk to humans, or the fact that insurance companies will jump at the chance to force the cheap AI down everyone's throats before they pay for human therapy, etc etc...

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