[HN Gopher] Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders Through AI Facial...
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       Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders Through AI Facial Expression
       Evaluation
        
       Author : Hard_Space
       Score  : 32 points
       Date   : 2022-08-03 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.unite.ai)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.unite.ai)
        
       | mhd wrote:
       | I agree with a few fellow posters that this looks a bit like
       | soothsaying 2.0, but it really doesn't matter whether it works or
       | not when it comes to the abuse potential, it's enough that people
       | in charge believe it. Ad targeting. Hiring. Dating.
       | 
       | My psychotherapist partner will like it, finally something in
       | that field that might be worse than the remaining Jungians.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | schizo89 wrote:
       | As a schizophrenic I'm super interested in obtaining a source
       | code and a dataset
        
       | pdenton wrote:
       | "Disorders"?!
       | 
       | What's this, "person of color" instead of "black" or N*, that's
       | all cool and agreeable, but then how on earth is "disorder" still
       | okay? Bull.
        
       | wildpeaks wrote:
       | Zachtronics' Eliza (https://www.gog.com/game/eliza) should be
       | mandatory reading material before one chooses to use AI to deal
       | with mental health issues.
        
       | MonkeyMalarky wrote:
       | Phrenology 2.0
        
         | cfcf14 wrote:
         | Exactly - this kind of research is repugnant and hopefully will
         | be seen the same way phrenology is seen.
        
         | antonymy wrote:
         | Yup. My exact thought upon seeing the headline. Reading the
         | article didn't really bring me away from this reaction either,
         | still feels like a whole lot of bunk.
        
         | JasserInicide wrote:
         | Exactly what I was thinking. Like Jesus Christ, diagnosing
         | mental illnesses is already a very shaky thing just due to
         | their nature, and now we think we can do it by looking at a
         | person's face?
        
       | fatih-erikli wrote:
       | Humans are much complicated than that. The article is a pure
       | shitposting and ignore it for your sanity. How come this can stay
       | in front of hackernews, It's unbelievable.
       | 
       | WHOLE HN HOMEPAGE IS SHITPOSTING. WHATS HAPPENNING.
        
         | Veuxdo wrote:
         | Quick, are your eyebrows arched rn?
        
       | civilized wrote:
       | Right. And we can also tell whether they're gay, whether they're
       | criminals, and whether they will buy Pepsi from our million-
       | dollar ad campaign.
       | 
       | Just kidding. A million dollars is way too little to spend on
       | Pepsi ads.
        
       | gchokov wrote:
       | Imagine this thing in your wearable AR glasses..
        
       | woodruffw wrote:
       | On top of other commenters' (correct) observations about
       | phrenology, I'll point out: the "disordered" face on the right is
       | coded as feminine: higher cheekbones, thinner and raised
       | eyebrows, &c.
       | 
       | Given that women are diagnosed with depression at nearly twice
       | the rate that men are, there's probably a fundamental data error
       | here. Which is no surprise, given that it's all bunk science.
        
       | llamataboot wrote:
       | Just what we need, machine learning phrenology to give people
       | diagnoses that effect them for life that are largely arbitrary
       | and porous categories
        
       | zoomablemind wrote:
       | Hard not to remember that AI parole-officer scene from the
       | Elysium movie [1].
       | 
       | The AI was 'detecting' several emotional states in real-time,
       | most notably the sarcasm.
       | 
       | At the movie release this looked quite spot-on about the AI
       | state. Perhaps now it's more able and sensitive/sensible.
       | 
       | [1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=flLoSxd2nNY
        
       | whatshisface wrote:
       | The pictures they offer look like someone who's feeling well, and
       | someone who's feeling bad. Would this model classify people with
       | chronic illnesses as mentally ill, because they're feeling bad?
       | What about people who had just dropped their phone and cracked
       | the screen?
        
         | drjasonharrison wrote:
         | While many people have raised negative applications and uses of
         | this technology, your question implies that the test is
         | performed without any other context or input from the person,
         | and that no follow-up questions are asked.
         | 
         | So, yes, it can be used to provide inaccurate classifications.
         | The application of the system will determine the (mis) use of
         | the classification.
         | 
         | Not enough therapists (currently a problem)....use the app!
         | 
         | Emergency Room full (currently a problem)....use the app!
         | 
         | Applying for insurance....use the app and send in your score...
        
       | neocodesoftware wrote:
       | according to multiple historical spurce this is the basis of the
       | voight-kampff test
        
       | AlanYx wrote:
       | This paper is a dog's breakfast. Even the header isn't properly
       | proofread (it reads "JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 14, NO.
       | 8, AUGUST 2015"). Figure 5 shows the results of an experiment
       | where people were asked to rate the mean faces, which seems
       | irrelevant to the rest of the work.
       | 
       | There could be some interesting work in this area, for example to
       | support or reject the popular belief in Asia that visible sclera
       | above or below the iris is indicative of mental health, but this
       | paper isn't it.
        
       | just_steve_h wrote:
       | "Opto Electric Phrenology" (OEP) would be a better name.
       | 
       | "Depression" and "Schizophrenia" as diagnostic categories are
       | fraught, as they include many subtypes and, in the latter case,
       | may lump together multiple distinct conditions.
       | 
       | At best, this "AI diagnosis" research can claim that the
       | "diagnosis" the system produced matches the "diagnosis" a panel
       | of human psychiatrists reached for the same subject. Like most AI
       | research, the training set and the biases and assumptions it
       | contains are the real challenge.
       | 
       | AI Ethics are not yet standard practice in most institutional
       | settings, and it shows.
        
         | didericis wrote:
         | > Like most AI research, the training set and the biases and
         | assumptions it contains are the real challenge.
         | 
         | That seems like an insurmountable problem. AI obfuscates those
         | assumptions and risks deeply ingraining them/causing
         | stagnation. If there isn't some kind of distributed human
         | mechanism actively involved in not just generating data, but
         | also in choosing the relevancy and the modeling, it seems like
         | many of these AI applications will be actively worse than human
         | centered systems that can address and evolve the model/data
         | collection based on those biases/assumptions on the fly.
         | 
         | AI seems like something that should only be used when the
         | success criteria are super clear/close to incontrovertible.
        
       | ccbccccbbcccbb wrote:
       | In a world run by utter psychopaths who print money out of thin
       | air for all those grants to award to AI, data mining and
       | surveillance R&D, there is no trace of doubt those areas are
       | inevitably going to be weaponized and used against the worst
       | enemy of the state - the individuality.
       | 
       | This is Punitive Psychiatry 2.0
        
       | phren0logy wrote:
       | I'm a psychiatrist, and (like most people) I'm both intrigued and
       | terrified about what AI will bring.
       | 
       | I'm not terrified about losing my job (we're spread so thin that
       | I don't think it will be an issue for competent psychiatrists in
       | my lifetime), but I'm terrified that the mentally ill are
       | marginalized and that a crappy but cost-effective approach with a
       | high margin of error may rise to prominence.
       | 
       | The diagnostic categories, as mentioned by just_steve, are indeed
       | imprecise, and the RDoc approach
       | (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research/research-funded-by-nimh/rd...)
       | would be a much better fit for this type of research.
       | 
       | Lastly, here is my dream for a good use of AI in psychiatry: With
       | so much psychiatric care happening remotely, I would love to have
       | a real-time dashboard/HUD with measures of disorganized speech
       | patterns or affective intensity, etc, that I could use to
       | supplement the information available via video link. It would be
       | nice to have some additional data to make up for the trade-off of
       | not being in the room. Perhaps one day with some kind of AR it
       | might even be able to happen in the same room. It would be hard
       | to make it not distracting, but done well it could add a lot. And
       | if it went with the patient if they moved then it would be far
       | more useful as it would be trained to their own personal
       | variations. It would be really nice to catch early onset of
       | episodes of mania or psychosis though subtle changes, and many of
       | the public-sector patients I work with bounce around too often
       | for someone to get to know them well enough to catch those subtle
       | changes from baseline.
        
         | MonkeyMalarky wrote:
         | What do you think of tools like one?
         | https://www.aifredhealth.com/
        
           | phren0logy wrote:
           | I can't really tell from the website, but maybe? The site
           | seems focused on depression, and at least in my practice I'm
           | not sure that would add much for me.
        
         | adamsmith143 wrote:
         | >but I'm terrified that the mentally ill are marginalized and
         | that a crappy but cost-effective approach with a high margin of
         | error may rise to prominence.
         | 
         | I understand the fear but is there any value to be gained by
         | vastly expanding access to Mental Health diagnostics, even
         | flawed ones?
         | 
         | Not being cheeky, genuinely interested. One hears about a
         | Mental Health crisis in the US quite often, so could this
         | actually be a net positive tool?
        
           | drjasonharrison wrote:
           | Personally, acknowledging that mental health is a real thing
           | that sometimes goes awry and requires real treatment is still
           | an issue that more people need to be aware of and more
           | accepting of.
           | 
           | I think we've made progress in addressing postpartum
           | depression and first responder PTSD. There remain many
           | stigmas and a lack of awareness about mental health, mental
           | injury, and moral injury, that in North American society lead
           | to substance and screen addictions, as well as anti-social
           | behaviours.
           | 
           | So diagnostics would be helpful, but treatment and societal
           | perspective needs to improve.
        
         | galdosdi wrote:
         | > a crappy but cost-effective approach with a high margin of
         | error may rise to prominence.
         | 
         | What, like antidepressants?
        
         | pdkl95 wrote:
         | > a crappy but cost-effective approach with a high margin of
         | error may rise to prominence.
         | 
         | The tech startup that eventually creates that will call this
         | "efficiency". This type of 'solution' is exactly what
         | capitalism creates.
         | 
         | > I would love to have a real-time dashboard/HUD with measures
         | of disorganized speech patterns or affective intensity
         | 
         | > It would be hard to make it not distracting
         | 
         | Not only would it be distracting, it could also bias you in
         | unexpected ways.
         | 
         | > I would love to have a real-time dashboard/HUD with measures
         | of disorganized speech patterns or affective intensity,
         | 
         | I already don't trust a lot of the mental health industry
         | because of the very bad experiences[1] I've had in the past.
         | The easiest/fastest way to guarantee I never visit a
         | psychiatrist again is to start using that kind of "AI" tech
         | without first showing me the source code. "Magic" hidden
         | algorithms are already a problem in other medical situations
         | like pacemakers[2] and CPAP[3] devices.
         | 
         | > make up for the trade-off of not being in the room
         | 
         | Maybe what you need isn't some sort of "AI" or other tech
         | buzzword. It sounds like you need better _communication
         | technology_ that doesn 't lose as much information.
         | 
         | --
         | 
         | On the more general topic of "AI in psychiatry", I strongly
         | encourage you to play the visual novel _Eliza_ [4] by
         | Zachtronics. It's about your fear of a cheap, high error rate
         | system with an additional twist: the same system also optimizes
         | _your_ role into a  "gig economy" job.
         | 
         | [1] a brief description of one of those experiences:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26035775
         | 
         | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2FNqXhr4c8
         | 
         | [3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xwjd4w/im-possibly-alive-
         | bec...
         | 
         | [4] https://www.zachtronics.com/eliza/
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | no small irony in the name of a company involved as "unite AI"
         | .. humans are predatory animals in packs, and make no mistake,
         | this tech will be used to hunt weak humans by other humans
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-03 23:02 UTC)