A $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation will support the new AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants, called ARIA, based at Brown to study human-artificial intelligence interactions and mental health. The initiative, announced in July, aims to help develop AI support for mental and behavioral health.
“The reason we’re focusing on mental health is because we think this represents a lot of the really big, really hard problems that current AI can’t handle,” said Associate Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive and Psychological Sciences Ellie Pavlick, who will lead ARIA. After viewing news stories about AI chatbots’ damage to users’ mental health, Pavlick sees renewed urgency in asking, “What do we actually want from AI?”
The initiative is part of a bigger investment from the NSF to support the goals of the White House’s AI Action Plan, according to a NSF press release. This “public-private investment,” the press release says, will “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance.”
According to Pavlick, she and her fellow researchers submitted the proposal for ARIA “years ago, long before the administration change,” but the response was “very delayed” due to “a lot of uncertainty at (the) NSF.”
One of these collaborators was Michael Frank, the director of the Center for Computational Brain Science at the Carney Institute and a professor of psychology.
Frank, who was already working with Pavlick on projects related to AI and human learning, said that the goal is to tie together collaborations of members from different fields “more systematically and more broadly.”
According to Roman Feiman, an assistant professor of cognitive and psychological sciences and linguistics and another member of the ARIA team, the goal of the initiative is to “develop better virtual assistants.” But that goal includes various obstacles to ensure the machines “treat humans well,” behave ethically and remain controllable.
Within the study, some “people work basic cognitive neuroscience, other people work more on human machine interaction (and) other people work more on policy and society,” Pavlick explained.
Although the ARIA team consists of many faculty and students at Brown, according to Pavlick, other institutions like Carnegie Mellon University, University of New Mexico and Dartmouth are also involved. On top of “basic science” research, ARIA’s research also examines the best practices for patient safety and the legal implications of AI.
“As everybody currently knows, people are relying on (large language models) a lot, and I think many people who rely on them don’t really know how best to use them, and don’t entirely understand their limitations,” Feiman said.
According to Frank, the goal is not to “replace human therapists,” but rather to assist them.
Assistant Professor of the Practice of Computer Science and Philosophy Julia Netter, who studies the ethics of technology and responsible computing and is not involved in ARIA, said that ARIA has “the right approach.”
Netter said ARIA approach differs from previous research “in that it really tried to bring in experts from other areas, people who know about mental health” and others, rather than those who focus solely on computer science.
But the ethics of using AI in a mental health context is a “tricky question,” she added.
“This is an area that touches people at a point in time when they are very, very vulnerable,” Netter said, adding that any interventions that arise from this research should be “well-tested.”
“You’re touching an area of a person’s life that really has the potential of making a huge difference, positive or negative,” she added.
Because AI is “not going anywhere,” Frank said he is excited to “understand and control it in ways that are used for good.”
“My hope is that there will be a shift from just trying stuff and seeing what gets a better product,” Feiman said. “I think there’s real potential for scientific enterprise — not just a profit-making enterprise — of figuring out what is actually the best way to use these things to improve people’s lives.”
Get The Herald delivered to your inbox daily.
