Some users see the chatbot as a way to supplement traditional mental health services, despite troubling privacy implications. Hugging Face AI Chief Ethics Scientist Meg Mitchell joins Caroline Hyde and Bloomberg's Rachel Metz for her take on this new trend.

California

The release of Open AI's ChatGPT has accelerated the development of artificial intelligence and warnings about its impact on society.

Rise of AI

Therapy new use case for ChatGPT?

How are people using chat GPT. You had some really intimate discussions with certain people who turned to it. Yeah I've spoken to some people who say they've used it either instead of speaking to a therapist or perhaps in addition to having a human therapist. And even though it's still really early days some people are finding it quite helpful which I thought was really interesting. It's actually not what I was expecting. But with that of course comes concerns Meg. And when you let's start on the hopeful areas of this Meg where do you see opportunity for such viral AI chat bots to be helpful in the world of mental health. Right. So there's a few areas. One in particular is around triaging. So figuring out who someone should talk to given that they have some issues. So basically there are like crisis text lines that are or crisis phone lines that are overrun with requests for help especially for veterans. But there aren't enough people with expertise to help them. And so one thing that's really useful is to have some sort of automated system to help people get quickly through different calls in order to route them to the right people. It's also this kind of technology is also really useful for what's called rubber ducking which is just sort of talking something out. When you have another entity that you can just talk something out to even if it doesn't respond that's often quite helpful. So those two sorts of use cases are arguably more pros than cons. Yeah. Rachel there were clearly alleviation of the fact that they feel that this isn't a therapist that's going to charge them a load or indeed get bored of them asking questions. But when you spoke to open a either company or indeed when you're thinking of people who use them alongside a therapist does that seem to be the better approach here. I think that right now it's really important to keep in mind that there are a lot of limitations here and perhaps the most obvious is that this is not intended to be any kind of therapist is the general use chat bot. Any data that you are providing to the system it could be viewed by open a.I. if it can be deleted but it might take up to a month to delete your account. So I personally try to avoid giving it any information when I'm typing with chat GPT because I want control of my own personal data. So it's not like talking to a professional therapist where you would have some sort of confidentiality. Yeah. Almost all cases. But also when asking a question of open a.I. does it realize that perhaps this is a sensitive area. Does it push back on giving any direct medical advice for example. Yeah. Their policies include don't use the chat bot to diagnose any kind of actual medical diagnoses. But also if you yeah if you're approaching it and saying like hey I need you know I need help you know help me as like sort of a therapist. It may push back but also at the same time it may may be like but if you want I can try to give you some advice. So one of the people I spoke to said that that it was like well I am not intended as a therapist. However I can I can try to help. And interestingly of course make there are other companies out there who are thinking about the ways in which loneliness can be helped. Replica is one that comes to mind. But you over hugging face and hugging faces and an A.I. community right. You're you're building your training the models you're putting them into practice in an open source manner. How are you thinking about ethics around its use whether it be for mental health or otherwise. Yeah. I mean with ethics work you're always thinking through different values different tensions different pros and cons. There's there's never like one very obvious clear answer when you're getting into the weeds of how this technology can affect people. And so we're working on things like gating mechanisms where while the source code is still open the ability to interact with a system is limited. You have to be able to submit a request. And this is a situation where eventually it would make sense to collaborate with clinicians therapists things like that. Have them be part of the system and part of the requests. So this is these gating mechanisms that work in open source. We also try and provide as much documentation and detail as possible. So we have heavy documentation protocols for data for models that go over intended uses ways that the technology could be misunderstood. So really focusing on the education to the users as well. Megan I'm going to ask you a tough quick one to finish. OK. Is open AI behaving responsibly here. Do you think in the use of chat GPT for into the broader community. Yes and no with everything with ethics. They are doing some things responsibly. They are doing some things very irresponsibly. And well I can go on. But yes yes and no. They're being irresponsible in some ways that this technology is made available.

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Kerrville

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Sana'a

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State of Rio de Janeiro

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