Artificial Intelligence and Psychology: A Powerful Duo
When you think of a powerful duo, you may think of you and your best friend, you and your pillow after AP Test week, your parents, your hobbies or even your pets! In fact, one of the most - or even the most - powerful duo is Artificial Intelligence and Psychology. In this blog post, we will learn a LOT about this duo. First, we will discuss the role of artificial intelligence within the field of psychology. Then, we will talk about uses of AI in Psychology and some projects between these two highly evolving fields of STEM.
Role of Artificial Intelligence in Psychology
Nowadays, AI is becoming useful in a variety of fields in a variety of ways, from robots to software distributed across networks.
In Psychology, AI has been becoming particularly helpful in mental health. As AI increases its potency, it is becoming increasingly essential for psychologists, therapists, and counselors to understand the existing capacity and future potential for the technology to transform mental healthcare.
Some of the ways that it has helped the way professionals attend their patients are the following:
Infrared imaging to recognize temperature changes
Olfaction (smell) analysis to identify intoxication
Facial recognition to confirm a patient’s identity
Vocal analysis to perceive subtle differences in speech characteristics
Physical assessments such as increased heart rate or temperature changes in response to challenging questions can provide valuable data for the clinician. Not only that, but also it has the ability to record data, manage record keeping, and trigger automatic follow-up actions. All these activities will facilitate the job of the professionals so that they can work on the treatment more efficiently.
AI within Psychology?
AI technology cannot only supplement and support therapists or counselors, but in fact it can replace them! And these forms of meetings are available now.
Detection and Computational Analysis of Psychological Signal
This project has the ability to identify cues for human distress through analyzing language and physical gestures that the use of machine learning and computer vision facilitate. Its main audience includes soldiers returning from combat and recognizes those who require further mental health support. It is expected that this will be able to combine data captured during face-to-face interviews with information on eating and sleeping.
Identification of Pulse Rate and Blood Flow
The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - has successfully used AI to analyze digital video. And in fact, it has been able to identify subtle changes to an individual’s pulse rate and blood flow, which is undetectable to the human eye. This is valuable during therapy sessions in order to uncover nonverbal cues and at the same time to monitor trauma patients’ breathing or even young babies in distress in hospitals.
Watson Health
It’s an AI-enabled analysis tool, which is commercially available and comes loaded with medical literature. This can serve as both consultant and medical expert. The amazing goal of this AI is to bring together and combine:
Data
Technology
Expertise
To supplement professional physical and mental health along with performing diagnoses and even suggesting treatments.
RP-VITA
This robot has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to facilitate the communication between healthcare providers and patients. It has the ability to access the patients’ medical records, which gives it the ability to monitor patients’ wellbeing. Not only that but also, this system is multidisciplinary, providing support for psychological, neurological, cardiovascular, and critical care assessments and examinations
Mental Health Diagnostic Expert System
This system uses advanced AI technology to encode expert knowledge of mental health disorders, which helps it to provide a diagnosis and propose treatments.
One of the best qualities of this system is that it involves a combination of rule-based and fuzzy logic to understand patients’ needs, agreeing on treatment plans that suit their budgets and that at the same time are appropriate alongside other health conditions. It looks for the best options for the patient’s health but also wallet.
This type of project has a positive impact on patient treatment and healthcare since it is cost effective and is available remotely. It is likely to develop rapidly.
AI-Based Apps
Woebot
It is a 2019 Google Play Award winner, which encourages the user to think through situations using tools inspired by Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Eventually, through the mood tracker it shows positive changes made over time - days and weeks.
Tess
It is a web-based mental health chatbot that offers the user wellness coping strategies. It promotes perseverance through text-based conversations via social media such as Facebook messenger, SMS, and web browsers rather than an app.
Youper
This app provides a personalized emotional health assistant to help treat conditions such as stress, anxiety, and depression. How? It uses techniques from therapies such as CBT and mindfulness to improve the patients’ mental health through a series of conversations.
Replika
It is a chatbot that creates an emotional connection and virtual friendship to support people going through depression, anxiety or difficult times.
What a Powerful Duo!
Psychology is undoubtedly one of the most important fields of health. People’s wellness should not only be important for the patients’ families but for everyone around. Therefore, increasing and improving the resources that we have to help patients have a more accurate diagnosis and a smoother treatment will help us all grow as a society. Scientists have been able to accomplish this goal through projects and apps such as the ones that we have discussed throughout this blog post and we cannot deny that Artificial Intelligence is being a huge help for counselors, therapists and professionals in general. The combination of these continuously evolving fields of STEM has and will continue to have a great and positive impact on the way mental health is treated.
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
