Article Excerpt: “It seems like this past week has been quite challenging for you,” a disembodied voice tells me, before proceeding to ask a series of increasingly personal questions. “Have you been feeling down or depressed?” “Can you describe what this feeling has been like for you?” “Does the feeling lift at all when something good happens?”
When I respond to each one, my chatbot interviewer thanks me for my honesty and empathises with any issues. By the end of the conversation, I will have also spoken about my sleep patterns, sex drive and appetite for food.
Could this be the future? According to some psychiatrists, chatbots like this may one day play a major role in the diagnostic toolkit. Their aim is to establish a series of “digital biomarkers”, analysed by AI, that will help assess people’s current condition, inform treatment options and keep track of their mental health. The list of candidate biomarkers so far includes the cadences of our voice, flickers of our facial expression, alterations in bodily movements and changes in heart rate that accompany sleep.
Full Article: https://tinyurl.com/bdh8mr23
Article Source: NewScientist