Ever felt down, but unsure who to speak to? No, this is not about access to a psychologist online. Yet, it is. Mindcarter, a psychology consultancy firm based in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, is working on a mobile application that will act as an AI counsellor one can chat with. The chatbot is the brainchild of Amar Rajan, psychologist and CEO of Mindcarter, who has spent years counselling employees of various companies, mostly in Technopark.
Reluctant clients
“Many choose online counselling over face-to-face. Most clients are, in general, reluctant to share details about their emotional situation. But when it is done online, they feel much more secure,” he says. Then there is the stigma of ‘having to take counselling’, which makes many people even more reluctant to go to a clinic or to meet a doctor. “So I have most of my face-to-face sessions at cafés nowadays. I have observed that many people feel much more comfortable and speak freely in a public space. But, then again, if any of them breaks down during the conversation, it might be difficult to handle in a public place,” explains Rajan.
A chat for the mind
Mindcarter’s chatbot, he believes, will be a trailblazer in this aspect. Designed to have a supportive and probing conversation with the user, the bot aims at putting together a psychological profile of the person using the answers provided during the chat.
“When we are counselling, we look for certain answers, and from this a basic assessment of the person’s condition can be made,” says Rajan.
A team of psychologists, including him, is currently at work compiling various kinds of psychometric details on different mental conditions that need to be used to programme the bot. “This is only the first step. As the bot is used by more and more people, machine learning will kick in to gather and store new information for future use,” he adds.
More than a pocket psychologist, the chatbot creators hope it becomes a support mechanism for people. “Imagine a situation when you are disturbed at work and feel like having a therapeutic conversation. That is when the chatbot would be of great help,” says Rajan. It will be programmed to be much more than that. For instance, if a person is suffering from clinical depression, it will show in the conversation with the bot and will be diagnosed.
Challenges
But how do you know if a question or a reply of the bot has not offended the person? What if the person is suicidal? That is an issue that needs to be taken care of, says Rajan. “The bot won’t be able to understand how a person actually feels, unlike a real psychologist. But depending on the answers provided, it can diagnose the condition. If the person has suicidal tendencies (or other severe conditions) and if these are revealed, then the bot will inform the acquaintance, whose contact details needs to be provided by the person who is being counselled, before starting to use the application,” he says. It is not a perfect science, he agrees, adding that at this point the pros outweigh the possible cons.
The future
A precursor of the chatbot has already been tested as part of a recruitment bot developed by Hyreo, a company in Technopark. “The recruitment bot, apart from focusing just on the quantitative skills of the potential candidates, now makes a psychological assessment as well, using the psychometric inputs we have provided. Non-quantitative skills, such as performing as part of a team and proficiency in the handling large amounts of data can be assessed using this profile.” This will in turn make the interviews much more effective and save a lot of time by cutting short the number of face-to-face meetings. The AI counsellor will have a design similar to that of the recruitment bot and Hyreo will be providing the required technical support to Mindcarter.
If all goes well, Rajan expects to launch a beta version of the chatbot by July this year. But he does not expect the tech to make psychologists redundant. “I see the future psychologist spending more time in research rather than counselling. It is a relief to the psychologists too, as long years of counselling take a huge toll on the psyche of counsellors as well,” he adds. The chatbot, Rajan says, is simply an intermediate or temporary relief, which itself would mean a lot to those in need. At some point, the bot itself will suggest that the user go and see a ‘real’ psychiatrist or a psychologist, depending on the severity of the condition.
