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posted by janrinok on Monday September 09 2019, @11:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the hello-Eliza dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718

Are psychiatrists really ready for the AI revolution?

The World Health Organization estimates that up to 15% of the population experiences mental health disorders. That has significant consequences. For example, suicide is the second- or third-leading cause of death for young people in most countries. And as the population ages, the rate of dementia is set to triple over the coming decades.

At the same time, access to mental health professionals is sorely lacking in many parts of the world, particularly in low-income countries. India, for example, has a population of 1.3 billion served by only 9,000 psychiatrists.

But technological advances can help. Smartphones and wearable sensors offer people the ability to monitor themselves and to benefit from the way deep learning can analyze the data. Indeed, these techniques are already being used to detect the changes in mood that indicate bipolar disorder or to detect people at risk of depression.  

So the scene is set for artificial intelligence to become a disruptive force in psychiatry. Indeed, that's exactly what many observers predict.

But what of psychiatrists themselves? These professionals will have to play a key role in any change that artificial intelligence brings to the field. So their view ought to be a useful indicator of its potential.

Enter Murali Doraiswamy at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, and couple of colleagues. This team has surveyed psychiatrists around the world to find out how they view machine intelligence and its likely impact on mental health care.

"To our knowledge, this is the first global survey to seek the opinions of physicians on the impact of autonomous artificial intelligence/machine learning on the future of psychiatry," say the team. Curiously, the results appear to say more about psychiatrists than about the state of technological readiness or its potential.

The team's method was straightforward. The researchers randomly chose a sample of 750 professional psychiatrists registered with an online database of over 800,000 health-care professionals around the world, including 22 countries in North and South America, Europe, and Asia; 30% were women and two-thirds were white.

The respondents clearly felt that machines could never learn some skills. "An overwhelming majority (83 per cent) of respondents felt it unlikely that future technology would ever be able to provide empathic care as well as or better than the average psychiatrist," say Doraiswamy and colleagues. Interestingly, a survey of family physicians in the UK showed they had a similar view.

The group was also divided on the risks that artificial intelligence might pose.  "Only 23 per cent of women predicted that the benefits of AI would outweigh the possible risks compared to 41 per cent  of men," say Doraiswamy and colleagues.

But they think they know why. "The gender differences in AI risk perception may be commensurate with a large body of findings that women are more risk averse than men," they say.

The most interesting results are in the way respondents feel machine intelligence will change their jobs. Three-quarters of them thought that artificial intelligence will play an important role in managing data, such as medical records. And about half thought it would fully replace human physicians when it comes to synthesizing information to reach diagnoses.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1907.12386 : Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Psychiatry: Insights from a Global Physician Survey


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:00AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:00AM (#891946)

    Eliza lives! [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:30AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:30AM (#891953)

      In what way does Eliza remind you of your mother?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:52AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:52AM (#891963)

        Both are old and feeble...

      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:49AM (2 children)

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:49AM (#891998) Journal

        1. Both are dead.

        2. In the end neither of them were able to adapt to modern society.

        3. I wouldn't ask either for life advice.

        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:40AM (1 child)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:40AM (#892049) Journal

          1. Both are dead.

          I'm sorry for the loss of your mother, but Eliza is still alive [google.com].

          (how does that make you feel?) (grin)

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:00PM

            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:00PM (#892285) Journal
            Zombies don't count. :-)

            By the same token we could say Dr Sbaitso is still alive ... somewhere ... lurking on an old 286 with an original soundblaster (the bad old days, when an 8 bit sound card cost $300.00 - but Space Quest V and Prince of Persia and Death Track wouldn't be the same without sound and VGA).

            --
            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:29AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:29AM (#891985) Journal

      Eliza? Hah! I would appreciate it if you would continue.

      [Real answer from Emacs' doctor]

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:17AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:17AM (#891949)

    AI takes away most jobs. The unemployed masses need psychiatrists or they will shoot up buildings. But they don't trust AI psychiatrists because AI put them out of work. So meatbag psychiatrists resist the AI incursion and get to keep their jobs.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:49AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:49AM (#891962)

      > So meatbag psychiatrists resist the AI incursion and get to keep their jobs.

      ... Unfortunately, very few people can afford to pay the meatbag psychiatrists (since most of the people are jobless). The meatbag psychiatrists will have to compete for the few clients that have some money and the rest of them will be poor.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:19AM (3 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:19AM (#891979) Journal

        The meatbag psychiatrists will have to compete for the few clients that have some money and the rest of them will be poor.

        Well, the meatbag psychiatrists will do it for food then.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:25AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:25AM (#891982)

          Something smells goooood...

          Could it be? My favorite dish, Swedish human meatballs?

          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:09PM (1 child)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:09PM (#892232) Journal

            Try Narn Breen [youtube.com] (aka, Swedish Meatballs)

            In the movie Soylent Green, at least people gladly PAID to commit suicide and become a food ingredient.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @09:54PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @09:54PM (#892401)

              No thanks, I'll go with the spoo [meyerweb.com], after all, I hear it's fresh today.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:58AM (1 child)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:58AM (#892000) Homepage Journal

      It's even more simple than that. You can't expect a machine to manage sympathy or even empathy enough to understand where you're coming from, so why would you talk to one? They may not even know why they're reluctant but you can bet your sweet bippy that head shrinking shall remain the province of humanity.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:15AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:15AM (#892062) Journal

        You can't expect a machine to manage sympathy or even empathy enough to understand where you're coming from

        How about "where you're going to"?
        Would that be enough to you?

        so why would you talk to one?

        I asked Alice [mfellmann.net].
        She said "Woe! Because I was programmed for it." Can't argue with that
        (or... shudders... is she a woman [soylentnews.org]?)

        you can bet your sweet bippy that head shrinking shall remain the province of humanity

        Alice (again) says: "No I don't think I can do it." Well, understandable, since she seems to have no bippy, sweet or otherwise.

        -----

        Ummm... so far, it shows more rationality than your comment.
        Maybe you are on your "replaced by A.L.I.C.E." way? How does this make you feel?

        (large grin)

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:19AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:19AM (#891950)

    I very doubt failing synthetic personalities could be cured (or, treated?) by chemical substances. This age is the end of psychiatry, just like as of many other barbaric paradigms.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:24AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:24AM (#891951)

      The cure is of course hallucinogens, which are banned.

      Cures aren't moneymakers. Treatments are.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:29AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:29AM (#891986) Journal

        The cure is of course hallucinogens, which are banned.

        Altered state of consciousness do not absolutely require hallucinogens [wikipedia.org].
        For example, hypoxia (also known as "auto-erotic asphyxiation" - large grin) can be used.

        PERL-induced-psychosis can also lead to dissociation states [wikipedia.org] and megalomania episodes; sometimes the changes are irreversible, just ask TMB (grin)

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:59AM

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:59AM (#892001) Journal

        The cure is to fix the underlying problem, whether it's social isolation, unemployment, social stigma, discrimination, sequelae of violence, hate, etc.

        You'd be amazed at how many people are suffering a lack of self-worth because of the current gig economy, which was caused by big tech. Ditto the precarious employment economy, which was also caused by big tech. And the millions who have tried, and failed, to pursue riches by literally devoting their whole lives to creating a killer app that had zero hope of success because their perception of the market reality was distorted.

        I've met one guy who quit his job and went on welfare to create the ultimate printer driver back in the DOS days. He believed this was God's will, and that he would earn so much money that his taxes would easily pay back a year on welfare many times.

        DOS went, Windows 3x came, he continued. Then Windows 95, 98. I don't know what happened when XP came out, but this is someone who let the lure of tech make him forever unemployable, because by the time I lost track of him, his "reality" was pretty divergent from the mainstream - so much so that no sane employer would risk them.

        AI won't fix this. Even reality won't. Some people are doomed.

        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:41AM (#891958)

      This age is the end of psychiatry, just like as of many other barbaric paradigms.

      The DSM is becoming politicized by ideologue clinicians. Specifically, they refuse to accept that NPD/ASPD are untreatable, that type 1 psychopathy is a criminal classification caused by a hereditary, neurological anomaly or that these conditions are diagnosable in children. The meek inherit the earth; sit back and enjoy the process.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:46AM (#891997) Journal

      Back in 2017, the UN announced that it was time to stop the medicalization of mental illnesses such as depression.

      See United Nations Statement criticizes medicalization of depression [madinamerica.com].

      The "chemical imbalance" claim for depression has never been definitively proven, even though we've been eating antidepressants for 60 years. The last study to make the claim of being a "definitive" Cochrane review turned out to be a fraud when Norweigans dug deeper a couple of months ago.

      Ever taken antidepressants? You're 297% more likely to relapse than if you try other solutions. Antidepressants don't fix the underlying problems that make a person depressed, any more than getting drunk does.

      Fix the cause, which is usually social, economic, or a combination of these. For example, job loss, ongoing stigma, economic failure, illness - drugging the brain doesn't fix these underlying problems, but fixing the underlying problems fixes the depression.

      Psychiatrists need to learn to stop handing out pills and help their patients fix their lives. If they can't do this, better to just turn the patient to a clued-in social worker or therapist.

      BTW, the University of Toronto has just established an antipsychiatry scholarship to help find a different approach to psychiatry than just keeping people on pills.

      We talk about the opiate crisis, but antidepressants not only don't control depression long-term, they have side effects that render many unable to work or even function. Long term effects include brain changes, higher suicide rates, and even cataracts, of all things. We're in an antidepressant crisis and we need to wake up.

      Why do psychiatrists resort to pills? It's quick, which makes it cheaper than listening and exploring options, or referring them to a therapist or a job counsellor.

      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:52AM

        by Coward, Anonymous (7017) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:52AM (#892055) Journal

        Spot on. But there is one kind of depression where pills do help. If you know you have a chronic bacterial infection, but physicians don't take you seriously, it can be pretty depressing. Antibiotics will do wonders though.

  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:36AM (1 child)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:36AM (#891956)

    Smartphones and wearable sensors offer people the ability to monitor themselves

    This message brought to you by smartphone and wearable sensor manufacturers, nazis collecting and profiting from all that collected data, and Big Data peddling their bullshit AI solutions. In fact, it was probably generated by one of their "AI" babble bots.

    So great, someone created a fancy version of ELIZA. That isn't going to help anyone when the problem is smartphones blaring advertising and constant "notifications", completely devoid of any actual human interaction.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:15AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:15AM (#891975)

      Big Data peddling their bullshit AI solutions

      Bullshit AI (expert systems, fuzzy logic, what have you) solutions have been pushed since the early days of computers, Big Data is just the latest buzzword on the same pack of marketing hounds.

      However, in this case, voice recognition is almost (not quite) starting to turn that corner where it just might be able to deliver "cognitive therapy" as well as the average therapist - and, remember, even though the average therapist isn't all that great, they're better than half the practicing therapists out there.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:06AM

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:06AM (#891970) Journal

    Are psychiatrists also ready for when the AI needs counseling?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:06AM (#891971)

    Are psychiatrists really ready for the AI revolution?

    We'd all do well if we were ready for the (next) AI winter.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:11AM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:11AM (#891972)

    I haven't met one yet who didn't go into the profession to try to understand why they, personally, are so messed up, and any time I've been in session with one (can count on fingers of one hand, but...) they, personally, are in much worse shape than I am for the things I'm there for "help" with.

    If Eliza works at all, a well trained AI should do much better, and if you can get the protocols approved, the AI can continuously train based on outcomes to refine its skills to better identify needs and interventions / therapies to yield optimal outcomes.

    Sure, they lack the human touch - and that's going to kill it for some patients, but having a bot running a group therapy session doesn't sound like a half bad idea to me - in a lot of ways I'd rather have a bot moderating group therapy than some power tripping One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest nurse.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 10 2019, @02:09AM (1 child)

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @02:09AM (#892007) Journal

      Well, since everyone is screwed up in some way, I would expect that would also include shrinks.

      Not to defend current practice, which is majorly fucked up, centered around medicalizing normal states of mind. Lost your job? Here, have a pill instead of job counseling. You'll still be unemployed, and we'll have to keep increasing the dose or changing meds since we haven't fixed the lack of a job and the side effects are going to keep you from successfully working anyway, but hey, if you don't feel better it's your brain's fault, not our fucked up "solution in a pill."

      You have a problem, they prescribe pills, you now have three (or more) problems - the original problem, which is not addressed, medication, and side effects.

      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:51PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @12:51PM (#892185)

        But the pill sellers/makers/investors benefit, so they continue to push for more use of the pills, and the legal and medical systems have proven happy to oblige.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:25AM (1 child)

    by black6host (3827) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:25AM (#891983) Journal

    The respondents clearly felt that machines could never learn some skills. "An overwhelming majority (83 per cent) of respondents felt it unlikely that future technology would ever be able to provide empathic care as well as or better than the average psychiatrist," say Doraiswamy and colleagues. Interestingly, a survey of family physicians in the UK showed they had a similar view.

    So, psychiatrists are saying they'll never be replaced by AI. I bet the steel and auto workers thought the same thing at one point. Not because of AI so much, as the loss of jobs in those fields weren't caused by AI, but rather it's not surprising for a group of people to feel they are indispensable.

    In community mental health clinics you rarely see a psychiatrist these days anyway. You get a nurse who can prescribe, at least round my parts of the world. I can see a time though where someone asks your questions off of a screen and inputs the answers and your meds drop out the chute onto the desk. 10 minutes and you're out of there. Pretty close to that now...

    Oh, and empathic care? Puhlease...

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:55PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:55PM (#892210)

      I came here to say the same thing. Generally speaking the people about to b replaced by new technology are the last ones to recognize it, so I fail to see how their opinion should be considered particularly relevant until the replacement is so well underway as to be undeniable.

      "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" springs to mind.

      And heck, I'm willing to bet that a functionally decent AI would probably be at least as capable of emulating empathy as most psychiatrists.

  • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)

    by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @01:10PM (#892189) Journal

    I read some above comments to see people are perceiving this as the psychiatrists losing work because we are all being so well cared for by our psych-waifu apps.

    I read it as 'is the psychologist profession ready to deal with the result of 50 million 22 year olds crying about their waifu sexbot not following instructions exactly.'

    But I step back and think there are bigger problems, the surveillance. Feeling you are surveilled. Going to meetings and knowing you encounterd an undercover cop. Realizing one of your good friends was an undercover cop. Dealing with knowing your credit data, security clearance application, and private messages on all platforms are for sale on the darknet. Dealing with knowing all of your NSA data is shared with the foreign country of israel, who will use it to harass you if you ever decide you don't want to help them wipe out the palestinians while pretending to be a victim. Being blacklisted and not knowing why because someone made a list of people with your politcal beliefs using information you did not know they even had.

    Realizing that the soldiers who should be protecting your internet and borders are actually also just sitting on the internet, but not defending you, rather they are arguing with you trying to convince you to let them murder more people with drones, believe the flat earth theory or become a violent racist.

    Realizing that all human institutions have failed you completely, all of the off the shelf tech has and will betray you horribly by design not accident, and that the same institutions that have to this point turned out to be utterly incompetent in every other field except for the brutal repression of civilian populations, are what is designing this 'ai' that we are supposed to welcome like a savior.

    Dealing also with the fact there is to my knowledge not a single pscyhiatrist educated or up to date on the tech subjects that are actually causing mass manias and delusions, so that even if I could afford and get an appointment, it would be several hours of lessons on wireshark, microelectronics and the history of modern civilian movement repression, before they would understand that I have in my hands evidence that I have been targetted for surveillance across a very long period of time without any accusation of committing any crime.

    Then they would need a pschiatrist and would also find there is no specialist in this area, so their only option would be to stop taking on technologists as clients or THEY will lose their minds.

    So yeah, I'm not expecting much going forward from the psych profession besides assisting militarized unaccountable law enforcement in imprisoning and torturing actual intelligent people who are working against the prison intercom system the internet has become.

    thesesystemsarefailing.net

    • (Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:26PM

      by Mer (8009) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:26PM (#892261)

      All but the most dysfunctional of psychotics are sane. Most psychological disorders are myths, shaming from the de facto "normals" (in statistical terms only).
      What we call paranoia should really be how anyone with two bit of sense acts.
      Let's see how "paranoiacs" react to the phone call informing them an automated system has found them at risk of suffering paranoia and they should make an appointment with a shrink to receive therapy and treatment.

      --
      Shut up!, he explained.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 10 2019, @04:38PM (#892264)

    it's probably going to find use in the (yuge) niche where the "doctor" is a robot
    clad in soft silicon, who you can visit naked and will ask you about your day in soft moaning sounds.

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