October 26, 2023
New research studies how AI can support people in being more empathetic about mental health
Lack of access is one of the main reasons people do not seek professional mental health care. That is where TalkLife, the biggest peer support platform globally, steps in to allow users to offer each other mental health support. Empathy is essential to these conversations about mental health, yet it can be challenging to know the right words to say.
To improve this process, Tim Althoff, a University of Washington assistant professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and his research team studied how artificial intelligence could help peer supporters with more empathetic responses on TalkLife. To develop AI models, they had people annotate 10,000 TalkLife responses for various aspects of empathy. From there they developed a reinforcement learning-based system that learns from thousands of empathetic responses found on the app.
The team found that peer supporters with access to feedback expressed between 20 – 40% more empathy than supporters who did not have access to feedback. They also found that peer supporters did not become overly reliant on AI and used the feedback as broader inspiration. Going forward, Althoff is excited to see increased AI-supported collaboration that could potentially aid more complex and open-ended tasks.