4 ms·

To be honest, the thought of AI doing therapy (and it's reliance on big data) sounds very black mirror to me. How long do you think it'll take ad companies to

To be honest, the thought of AI doing therapy (and it's reliance on big data) sounds very black mirror to me. How long do you think it'll take ad companies to do an end run around patient protections and start serving ads based on "metadata"? Got anxiety? Try our new meds! Worried about the future? How about some life insurance or annuities? Etc. Things will get very exploitative very fast.

yupper32 5y ago
Tech companies don't need a specific therapy app to know if you have anxiety. If they wanted to be nefarious in this way, they could just mine your chats and emails and get a great idea about your state of mind. They wouldn't even have to get around potentially legally privileged information. My go-to related example of this: People often worry that Facebook is listening to their conversations because they'll see an ad related to a conversation soon after. You probably shouldn't worry that they might be listening to you (because they're not), but you might want to worry that they didn't need to listen to you to know what ad to serve you.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  I think the “Facebook is listening” position is common because realizing how predictable people’s current interests are is a bit unsettling.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    I think what's even more unsettling is realizing people's interests aren't as much predictable as they're being made predictable. My wife and I, we experience a "Facebook is listening" event roughly every month these days. Of course I know they aren't, but these too-well-targeted ads or post recommendations aren't about generic, easy-to-guess interests - they're about completely random things that we just happened to spontaneously and briefly talk about that same day. The most likely explanation to me is that those conversation topics weren't actually spontaneous - that is, we were already primed, nudged to talk about this, and while we didn't know that, ad targeting algorithms did.
    - throwaway_dcnt 5y ago
      Why do you think they are NOT listening? Whatsapp and facebook messenger/chatter thing both have mic access for a lot of people and it is truly bizzare how topics of conversations, even the first time they are broached, end up in facebook ads.
      - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
        I think the data/power usage would be noticeable.
        throwaway_dcnt 5y ago
        They sample it every few minutes or seconds.
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
        You can decompile these apps and audit them to your heart’s content.
    - lygaret 5y ago
      Couldn't that just be availability bias though? as in, these ads for _things_ were shown to you anyway, because there's hundreds of ads shown to you in some way or another every week and some percentage of them are for _things_, but because you were recently engaged in a conversation about _thing_, ads for _thing_ stood out in your perception enough to get past your attention filter?
zitterbewegung 5y ago
This already happens (but less targeted). I think that's why Australia banned pharmaceutical ads. https://theconversation.com/drug-ads-only-help-big-pharmas-bottom-line-so-why-are-they-allowed-45317 https://theconversation.com/drug-ads-only-help-big-pharmas-b...
silicon2401 5y ago
The concept predates black mirror by decades. ELIZA was an "AI" used for therapy in the 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA Learned about it in the documentary Century of the Self, an outstanding work.
- xpe 5y ago
  > The concept predates Black Mirror by decades. Black Mirror was mentioned not because it pioneered this idea but because each episode shows a possible dystopian future associated with various technological advances.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
afro88 5y ago
Worse than that: as an influence on the conversational AI model, to push certain products by weighting responses that recommend them higher. Less hassle than throwing a conference for doctors and sending reps out to give them free stationery every month
op03 5y ago
The limitation of a human therapist is the 6 inch chimp brain and how much information it can store, understand, how quickly it can construct a healthy way of delivering that complex information etc. These limits can and will be blown away by bots given the amount of data they can crunch. Only issue is unlike in games like Chess or Go where the end state is clearly defined, with therapy its open ended and unknown what type of end states are possible. Just a matter of time before all paths get mapped out.
bserge 5y ago
It would have to be offline and highly personalized by a professional (or by the individual), I see no other way around it.

yupper32 5y ago

Tech companies don't need a specific therapy app to know if you have anxiety. If they wanted to be nefarious in this way, they could just mine your chats and emails and get a great idea about your state of mind. They wouldn't even have to get around potentially legally privileged information. My go-to related example of this: People often worry that Facebook is listening to their conversations because they'll see an ad related to a conversation soon after. You probably shouldn't worry that they might be listening to you (because they're not), but you might want to worry that they didn't need to listen to you to know what ad to serve you.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
I think the “Facebook is listening” position is common because realizing how predictable people’s current interests are is a bit unsettling.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I think what's even more unsettling is realizing people's interests aren't as much predictable as they're being made predictable. My wife and I, we experience a "Facebook is listening" event roughly every month these days. Of course I know they aren't, but these too-well-targeted ads or post recommendations aren't about generic, easy-to-guess interests - they're about completely random things that we just happened to spontaneously and briefly talk about that same day. The most likely explanation to me is that those conversation topics weren't actually spontaneous - that is, we were already primed, nudged to talk about this, and while we didn't know that, ad targeting algorithms did.
  - throwaway_dcnt 5y ago
    Why do you think they are NOT listening? Whatsapp and facebook messenger/chatter thing both have mic access for a lot of people and it is truly bizzare how topics of conversations, even the first time they are broached, end up in facebook ads.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
      I think the data/power usage would be noticeable.
      - throwaway_dcnt 5y ago
        They sample it every few minutes or seconds.
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
      You can decompile these apps and audit them to your heart’s content.
  - lygaret 5y ago
    Couldn't that just be availability bias though? as in, these ads for _things_ were shown to you anyway, because there's hundreds of ads shown to you in some way or another every week and some percentage of them are for _things_, but because you were recently engaged in a conversation about _thing_, ads for _thing_ stood out in your perception enough to get past your attention filter?

zitterbewegung 5y ago

This already happens (but less targeted). I think that's why Australia banned pharmaceutical ads. https://theconversation.com/drug-ads-only-help-big-pharmas-bottom-line-so-why-are-they-allowed-45317 https://theconversation.com/drug-ads-only-help-big-pharmas-b...

silicon2401 5y ago

The concept predates black mirror by decades. ELIZA was an "AI" used for therapy in the 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA Learned about it in the documentary Century of the Self, an outstanding work.

xpe 5y ago
> The concept predates Black Mirror by decades. Black Mirror was mentioned not because it pioneered this idea but because each episode shows a possible dystopian future associated with various technological advances.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

afro88 5y ago

Worse than that: as an influence on the conversational AI model, to push certain products by weighting responses that recommend them higher. Less hassle than throwing a conference for doctors and sending reps out to give them free stationery every month

op03 5y ago

The limitation of a human therapist is the 6 inch chimp brain and how much information it can store, understand, how quickly it can construct a healthy way of delivering that complex information etc. These limits can and will be blown away by bots given the amount of data they can crunch. Only issue is unlike in games like Chess or Go where the end state is clearly defined, with therapy its open ended and unknown what type of end states are possible. Just a matter of time before all paths get mapped out.

bserge 5y ago

It would have to be offline and highly personalized by a professional (or by the individual), I see no other way around it.