BrainWise Bridges Technology

Posted On: September 16, 2024

The previous BrainWise newsletter discussed research that showed the importance of human interaction and its benefits for improved mental health and longevity. Increasingly, youth and young adults are using chatbots to fulfill this role. But how can instructors integrate Machine Learning (ML) into teaching the 10 Wise Ways and what is the future use of chatbots in education?

BrainWise instructors have found that students assigned human characteristics to their computers during a beta test of an online learning program.  The students use phrases such as it “tricked me” and the computer “had an attitude.”

In recent developments, Chatbots have confirmed and extended this type of reaction. In 2023, Sam Zaia, Ph.D. developed thePsycholgist.ai chatbot for himself and his friends when they needed someone to talk to about depression, anxiety, and other common problems. A year later, his chatbot has had more than 136K conversations with users aged from 16 to30. It is the most popular chatbot out of many, of variable quality, which provide emotional support.

These findings caught educators and health professionals by surprise and the reviewed the simultaneously collected user data that was available to everyone. Online scientific studies reported that chatbots fill a dearth of mental health services, the benefits far outweigh the problems, and that “chatbots have great potential to offer social and psychological support.”

Find out more about these benefits by reading the September BrainWise newsletter… https://conta.cc/3XuluZR    Also, follow this link to a study conducted in 2023 by Hague,J. and Rubya, S. that contains a list of these attributes…. JMIR mHealth and uHealth 

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