TITLE
Can Artificial Intelligence Detect Depression in a Person’s Voice?
DESCRIPTION
Can artificial intelligence detect depression? MIT researchers have been studying algorithms that analyze voice and words to make a depression diagnosis. In a majority of instances, the analysis is correct. “What makes that possible, says Tuka Alhanai, a researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is the ability of a machine learning model to identify speech and language patterns associated with depression. More importantly, the model she and fellow MIT scientist Mohammad Ghassemi developed was able to recognize depression with a relatively high degree of accuracy through analyzing how people speak, rather than their specific responses to a clinician’s questions.” While this may signal a future change in mental health, it is not without criticisms which include early stigma, false positives, placebo and nocebo effects, and losing the face-to-face elements of meeting with a professional. This article, though somewhat technical, may be used in a discussion of how diagnoses are made by professionals as an auxiliary reading with the abnormal/psychopathology chapters.
(For those students whose interests lie in technical areas, this article may be a good one as a view to “new” careers in the field of Psychology.)
SOURCE
Smithsonian, November 5, 2018, by Randy Rieland
LINK TO RESOURCE
(Tiny URL) http://tinyurl.com/ybypeurf
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
•The research on Artificial Intelligence makes a claim, that depression can be diagnosed just from words and the sound of the voice. How do the researchers explain this?
•How is AI diagnosis different than that of a client and face-to-face interview with a professional psychologist interviewing the client?
•According to the critics of the AI, what are some of the problems with this type of future means to diagnose mental health problems?
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