Linguistics & Philosophy IUSS Center
2022 IUSS Linguistics Seminars
"Language technologies in psychiatric research:
the challenges and opportunities of translating into practical tools"
May 2nd, 2022, h. 16.30-18
Brita Elvevåg, University of Tromsø
Introduced by Valentina Bambini, IUSS
There is much excitement about the potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in psychiatry, but there is also a very real fear that these methods will not nurture trustworthiness. Leveraging speech technologies is enabling the remote monitoring of psychiatric patients’ mental states. However, these psychiatric applications of machine learning and natural language processing techniques have a ‘wild west’ feel to them, and the seemingly powerful discoveries run the risk that models are making decisions for spurious reasons perhaps contrary to clinicians' opinions. Indeed, in most cases the algorithms and models are not yet ready to be translated into psychiatric practice. Our research has focused on two interrelated work-streams: The first is to collect clinical data, develop AI methods to assess patient states longitudinally based on language and other natural behavior, and validate performance. The second is to develop and use a framework to establish that the resulting approaches are sufficiently explainable, transparent and generalizable to be more broadly applied. Leveraging language data and natural language processing methods provide unprecedented opportunities for understanding psychiatric conditions and for translating into precision medicine tools. However, clear guidelines are essential so as to avoid generating conclusions that may not generalize or may have adverse consequences when applied clinically.
To join the seminar follow this link:
https://iusspavia.zoom.us/s/81297038537
Contacts:
Luca Bischetti, luca.bischetti@iusspavia.it
Matteo Greco, matteo.greco@iusspavia.it