Tech companies are marketing AI-based note-taking software to therapists as a new time-saving tool. But by signing up, providers may be unknowingly offering patients’ sensitive health information as data fodder to the multibillion-dollar AI therapy industry.
You know, as with a lot of these tech advances that impinge upon privacy and put us at risk in the name of profit, the buy-in, the thing they’re offering in exchange, IS actually pretty worthwhile. This is extremely useful. It’s such a shame that all this cool Star Trek shit that I would have been giddy about as a kid has been realised, but at a sinister and often hidden cost.
Is there any way this can be done on local metal? Would it achieve the same level of accuracy and sophistication of the progress notes? Because if this can be offered to the therapists that wanted it enough in the first place that they either knowingly or unwittingly sacrificed their patient’s privacy for it, maybe they can be given an alternative.
The specific application in this instance was that it creates “progress notes”. Admittedly, as I have only the information from the article itself, having no background in this field myself, I can only make assumptions what those are like, but as the name implies it’s charting a client’s progress through therapy and would also imply to me a lot of summarising of information gleaned during sessions. I guess in as much as it also would necessarily have to create a transcript in doing this for you, I guess it also provides that too. This is portrayed as tedious and time consuming work by the creators of the service, who obviously have a vested interest in casting it in such light, but taken at its word, I would say in my opinion the advantage would be in automating some of the tedious and time consuming aspects of the job.
As I suspect you were driving at from the tenor of the question, there’s a lot of ways this could go wrong, in particular privacy concerns when this service is offered in the manner that it is here where it’s processed outside of the therapist’s own clinic by 3rd parties and information is shared with additional parties and used for many purposes with only the flimsy promise of “de-anonymisation” which appears to be hollow. It could also maybe affect how the therapy is conducted, making decisions about how to summarise this information that will influence what decisions a therapist makes and perhaps that therapist might have summarised it differently if doing the notes themselves, then again this all hinges upon how effective it is considered to be. If it can be evaluated and found to be generally good, then it seems tentatively like this could be a pretty helpful tool for a therapist. But in general, my comment was really more directed at what I feel like is a sad state of affairs across the board with recent tech advances including generative AI as applied in any aspect of life or work, that I think is often lost in these conversations where the technology really shows promise or is quite impressive but because of the manner of its development or the surveillance profit model, it’s basically tainted and ruined. I feel like I often come across commentary that fails to make the distinction between the negative aspects of how these techs have come about and are monetized and the tech itself where the latter is simply cast as inherently undesirable even when there’s clearly reason enough for people to find it appealing in the first place for it to end up in use.
I think nothing stands in the way of doing this on local metal, as far as technology goes. Something similar has already been achieved for personal photo sorting, e.g. https://ente.io/
You know, as with a lot of these tech advances that impinge upon privacy and put us at risk in the name of profit, the buy-in, the thing they’re offering in exchange, IS actually pretty worthwhile. This is extremely useful. It’s such a shame that all this cool Star Trek shit that I would have been giddy about as a kid has been realised, but at a sinister and often hidden cost.
Is there any way this can be done on local metal? Would it achieve the same level of accuracy and sophistication of the progress notes? Because if this can be offered to the therapists that wanted it enough in the first place that they either knowingly or unwittingly sacrificed their patient’s privacy for it, maybe they can be given an alternative.
in your opinion what advantage would AI give to experienced therapists?
The specific application in this instance was that it creates “progress notes”. Admittedly, as I have only the information from the article itself, having no background in this field myself, I can only make assumptions what those are like, but as the name implies it’s charting a client’s progress through therapy and would also imply to me a lot of summarising of information gleaned during sessions. I guess in as much as it also would necessarily have to create a transcript in doing this for you, I guess it also provides that too. This is portrayed as tedious and time consuming work by the creators of the service, who obviously have a vested interest in casting it in such light, but taken at its word, I would say in my opinion the advantage would be in automating some of the tedious and time consuming aspects of the job.
As I suspect you were driving at from the tenor of the question, there’s a lot of ways this could go wrong, in particular privacy concerns when this service is offered in the manner that it is here where it’s processed outside of the therapist’s own clinic by 3rd parties and information is shared with additional parties and used for many purposes with only the flimsy promise of “de-anonymisation” which appears to be hollow. It could also maybe affect how the therapy is conducted, making decisions about how to summarise this information that will influence what decisions a therapist makes and perhaps that therapist might have summarised it differently if doing the notes themselves, then again this all hinges upon how effective it is considered to be. If it can be evaluated and found to be generally good, then it seems tentatively like this could be a pretty helpful tool for a therapist. But in general, my comment was really more directed at what I feel like is a sad state of affairs across the board with recent tech advances including generative AI as applied in any aspect of life or work, that I think is often lost in these conversations where the technology really shows promise or is quite impressive but because of the manner of its development or the surveillance profit model, it’s basically tainted and ruined. I feel like I often come across commentary that fails to make the distinction between the negative aspects of how these techs have come about and are monetized and the tech itself where the latter is simply cast as inherently undesirable even when there’s clearly reason enough for people to find it appealing in the first place for it to end up in use.
I think nothing stands in the way of doing this on local metal, as far as technology goes. Something similar has already been achieved for personal photo sorting, e.g. https://ente.io/