Kirwan’s AI vision for mental health
Picture this. Every day you chat about your mental health issues on your preferred device to a ‘‘digital human’’, who can see and hear you and can take account of your tone of voice and body language.
If Sir John Kirwan’s new project goes according to plan, that scenario – developed in New Zealand – will be available during 2019. He sees the use of artificial intelligence as a way to help overcome a shortage of mental health professionals, or reluctance people may have about seeing a professional, and to help people ‘‘be a little bit better every day’’.
Kirwan is a former All Black, who has talked about his experience with depression and is involved in mental health and depression awareness campaigns.
He has set up a company called Mentemia – Italian for ‘‘my mind’’ – to develop ‘‘personalised, AI-powered digital mental health coaches’’. He has partnered with New Zealand company FaceMe, a provider of AI-powered digital humans. The aim was to develop something that was ‘‘effectively like having a video call with a human, except an AI-powered digital human’’, FaceMe chief executive Danny Tomsett said.
Work was being done on what the digital humans would look like. One possibility was they could look like Kirwan.
The digital human would have a camera, as well as being able to hear. It could be listening to the tone of a person’s voice and could see them, if a person selected that.
It could understand a person’s body and facial language, and its responses could be defined by the way a person was behaving as much as by what they were saying, Tomsett said.
Digital humans had the ability to understand emotion and to express emotion.
‘‘The personal digital mental health coaches will combine cutting-edge machine learning with human-like qualities to offer engaging, meaningful conversation and advice to users,’’ Tomsett said. FaceMe led the world in the technology, which was now mature enough that it could start to solve some of the problems involved.
Kirwan said Mentemia his idea was that employers would make the product available to their staff as a gift.
The aim was to create access to mental health help on a daily basis, giving people something like having a personal psychologist, Kirwan said.
‘‘What you would do, you would go and talk to the digital human about a problem you have.’’ Those problems could be such things as financial issues, difficulty sleeping, or a confrontation at work.
The aim was to be able to ask questions in the same way as a person would with any professional. It would be on people’s phone, tablet or computer.
The more someone used their digital coach, the more it would get to know them and their needs and wants, Kirwan said.
‘‘Ideally our goal is to pretty much have the brains of 10 psychiatrists and psychologists in the digital coach, so any question you ask, or any problem you have, the digital coach should know the answer.’’
The digital human would be driven by the users.
‘‘It has the knowledge that you need to stay well mentally.
‘‘The reason I’m excited about it is if people can trust this, you can go and see your digital human every day to talk about the thing you’re working on,’’ he said.
‘‘At the end of the day it’s driven by us and the person that’s using it.’’ It was no-one else’s and once it was turned off, it stayed turned off. After employers provided the mental health coaches to staff they would then ‘‘step away’’.
‘‘Obviously the cost of developing it will be pretty high. We’re raising some funds to do that. We haven’t determined the final costs to the user yet,’’ Kirwan said.
Details were being worked out but he would want the system to be available to everyone. The aim was to make it affordable.
Mental Health Foundation chief executive Shaun Robinson said if AI-based support was part of a range of options available to provide support and help it could be really helpful.