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A therapy chatbot for depression

businessinsider.fr

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#61
post #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.

It's gross-negligence at the very least. Facebook routinely experiments on people in a way that's dangerous to people with mental health issues (and likely even healthy adults). Opening up their treatment to Facebook is incredibly negligent.

>> It's gross-negligence at the very least.

It's probably the basis of their business model, in order to monetize conversations people have with the chatbot.

It's even more absurd given the fact that conversations between patient and therapist should be guaranteed to be private, otherwise the necessary trust will never be established.

Thinking that a chatbot can do a therapist's job is, for me, either a clear display of massive ignorance, or a deliberate attempt to make a buck off people that can't afford proper therapy.

Psychological therapy focuses (not only, but mostly) on basic aspects of humanity: feelings and reasoning, and the actions that transpire from these.

Everything is important in such an engagement: the language used, the topics discussed, the best approach to a specific topic. And all of these depend on who the patient is (his feelings, outlook over life, language used to express these), but also on how the therapist reads/understands the patient and acts/dialogues over this.

I can't see how someone can honestly think this is something a chatbot can do, how could a piece of software reason over what the person is saying and feeling. But I think it's a well established fact that therapy can actually be nefarious or even dangerous if done improperly.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#62
post #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 re…

Hello! I'm Pamela, CTO@Woebot. I agree that the privacy policy is confusing, and I've started to make a list of standard questions that people ask Woebot about privacy. I'd like to make a TLDR at the top that covers the FAQs. Could you let me know what particular questions you want answered, so that it can cover that? Thank you!

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems like the real danger is the appeal of sacrificing nuanced treatment for convenient treatment. Your comment pointed out that for many people the choice might boil down to a supportive app or nothing. And as you noted, personal change can take years of dedicated person effort. To me, it seems like the biggest risk in the long term isn't in whether or not people get treated. The article demonstrates that the te…

Pamela from Woebot here. That's a great point. We actually plan to detect when users have not improved their mental state enough over time (based on a brief clinical screen every few weeks plus the daily moods), and in that case, we will suggest that we are not effective for them and point out other options. It would be up to the user to consider the options and act on them, of course.

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#64

I think this is a great idea due to the fact that we need new approaches to depression. Tracking your mood would be helpful to people with mental disorders and could also inform their medical professionals. Also, the theraputic effects of a chatbot that has research behind it gives it a large amount of credibility that this actually has a postive impact. On the other hand although the creators of the bot have good in…

Pamela from Woebot here! We plan to develop non-FB options in the future, and they could involve entirely client-side stored data with no internet relay. There's a mailing list here if you'd like to find out when those are offered: https://www.woebot.io/#besides-facebook

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#65

You will need to install the Facebook to try it.

Yes, that is currently true. We plan to develop non-FB options in the future, mobile apps with minimal server data interaction/storage. There's a mailing list here if you'd like to find out when those are offered: https://www.woebot.io/#besides-facebook

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#66
post #7

Really like this, but wish it wasn't via Facebook messenger. Maybe I'll make a one off profile to use it.

(Pamela from Woebot here) Yes, I'm afraid it's only FB right now. We plan to develop non-FB options in the future, mobile apps with minimal server data interaction/storage. There's a mailing list here if you'd like to find out when those are offered: https://www.woebot.io/#besides-facebook

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#67

Couldn't they have picked a better platform than Facebook to try this out on, given all of the research into the effect of social media on one's mental state?

(Pamela from Woebot). Great points here about the pro's and con's of Facebook integration.

Regardless of those, we definitely plan to develop non-FB options in the near future. There's a mailing list here if you'd like to find out when those are offered: https://www.woebot.io/#besides-facebook

On a personal note, I oft recommend the "Kill News Feed" Chrome extension for Facebook users. (Woebot doesn't recommend it as he doesn't know about it yet, he lives in a happy world free of news feeds :).

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#68
post #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 re…

Hello! I'm Pamela, CTO@Woebot. I agree that the privacy policy is confusing, and I've started to make a list of standard questions that people ask Woebot about privacy. I'd like to make a TLDR at the top that covers the FAQs. Could you let me know what particular questions you want answered, so that it can cover that? Thank you!

The main thing you're achieving with this, is providing Facebook with a marketing data point.

Chats with woebot == user suffering from depression

Combined with Facebook's previous psychological experimentation on users, your entire business model should be seen as harmful.

Have you thought through the ethical implications of what you're doing, at all?

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#69

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.

Hacker news used to be a site with optimistic people, entrepreneurs, people that did stuff, people that built stuff... now it's all whining about people that are actually doing things. It makes me think of the roosevelt speech... It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually…

Why do you think that people raising ethical concerns about business practices is not constructive?

Re: A therapy chatbot for depression

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ou…

Imagine in the future, a really smart shrink AI is invented that can provide useful insight on how mental health of an individual might be improved. Then, everyone who has logs with this bot, or similar technologies, will be able to benefit retroactively simply by having more digital data points. Just because you're not talking with a human about the data you're generating _today_ doesn't mean it won't bring interest…

Those discussions will include "which products are depressed people most likely to purchase?".
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