Tobias Thejll-Madsen - The Chatbot Will See You Now

### Tobias Thejll-Madsen - The Chatbot Will See You Now: Mental Health in the Age of AI

When things are hard, who do you turn to? While answers vary, only in the last few years has a common response become artificial intelligence (AI). With recent developments in generative-AI chatbots (such as ChatGPT), more people are seeking support and companionship from digital services without a human in the loop.

These technologies can reach individuals in contexts where waiting lists for professional therapists are long – or where no therapist is available at all. However, how do we know whether such technologies are good at providing support, and how can we build safeguards to ensure they do not accidentally harm users? Is this even possible? And what does this mean for our ability to connect as people? This talk explores these questions, and will probably leave you with a few more. Note: the talk will touch on mental health challenges and will briefly mention suicide.

Dr Tobias Thejll-Madsen has a PhD from the University of Glasgow looking at methodological challenges in affective computing – an interdisciplinary area that seeks to equip computers with the ability to recognise, model, and respond to human emotion. In his work, he develops rigorous testing paradigms built on strong theoretical foundations from psychology to ensure that claims about the abilities of different artificial intelligence tools are accurate and grounded. He currently works with the University of Edinburgh, where he is teacher with Edinburgh Futures Institute and a senior research affiliate with the Centre for Technomoral Futures.

Additionally, attendance is free and no ticket is required. We operate on a first come first served basis. It's relatively rare that we fill up the function room, but please be aware that if things are looking busy, the earlier you get there the less chance there is of not getting in.