IBM Watson: Can AI Have Trouble Finding a True Friend?
October 19, 2020
It appears that IBM’s super computer Watson is dealing with loneliness during the global pandemic, because the Daily Mail shares: “Artificial Intelligence Can Detect How Lonely You Are With 94 Percent Accuracy Just By Analyzing Your Speech Patterns.”
Researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine studied the speech patterns of older adults when they discussed loneliness. Using AI that included IBM’s Watson, the researchers analyzed how participants spoke including words, phrases, and silence gaps. They discovered that AI algorithms were almost as accurate as self-reports and questionnaires.
The researchers discovered that lonely people usually have long respires when discussing loneliness and express more sadness in their responses. The problem with self-reports and questionnaires (also completed by individuals) are often biased, because of stigma associated with loneliness.
To avoid bias, the researchers used natural language processing specially designed as a quantitative assessment of expressed emotion and sentiment combined with the usual loneliness diagnostic tools. The project did the following:
“Participants were also interviewed during personal conversations, which were taped and manually transcribed. Transcripts were then examined using natural language processing tools, including IBM’s Watson Natural Language Understanding (WNLU) software, to quantify sentiment and expressed emotions. WNLU uses deep learning to extract metadata from keywords, categories, sentiment, emotion and syntax. ‘Natural language patterns and machine learning allow us to systematically examine long interviews from many individuals and explore how subtle speech features like emotions may indicate loneliness,’ said first author Varsha Badal at UCSD. ‘Similar emotion analyses by humans would be open to bias, lack consistency and require extensive training to standardize.’”
The AI predicted with 94% accuracy self-acknowledged loneliness and quantitative loneliness with 76%. In the future, mental health professionals may use AI algorithms with natural language processing to diagnosis and record loneliness. It would be more accurate without the self-bias and could lead to better treatment.
Whitney Grace, October 18, 2020
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