Artificial Intelligence Project Reflection
Artificial Intelligence, a topic that is becoming increasingly more prevalent in our world. For some, it’s being embraced and for some it’s the beginning to the end. Despite where you stand on it, it’s certainly something you’ll be seeing more and more as years go by. In my own part of this project, I got to explore the different opinions that people hold on it. My methods were through interviewing and also a survey. The interviewing process went relatively smooth and Gabriel Lamas actually got back to me very timely. It was a pleasure to talk with him and he had some very insightful things to say. As a social worker and therapist, I kind of expected him to hold a certain opinion in regards to the use of AI in his field, but he was surprisingly open-minded. When I asked him how he thought it could be incorporated into therapy or mental health support, he didn’t think it would be very effective as people just naturally wouldn’t be able to grasp the fact that they’re essentially talking to a robot. Not only that, but he thought patients would not respond positively to that form of therapy. “The best way to predict therapeutic success is by the quality of the therapeutic relationship,” he said. And with a robot, it just wouldn’t come naturally. It goes without saying, but human connection is key. Humans can’t truly bond with machines in a healthy manner. But I do want to note that he said he wouldn’t be entirely opposed to it, and would push for more testing and experimentation with it in areas other than mental health or social work before it is integrated as a normal practice in this field.
However, he did propose that AI be incorporated into the clerical side of the mental health field. In social work and the healthcare field in general, there is a lot of paperwork that needs to be filled out on each patient, for each visit, and it is also meant to be filled out within a specific time frame from when you see the patient. In healthcare, if it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen, so every session between a health professional and their patient has to be put into the system they use. On top of that, they only have a 48 hour time frame to submit the documentation on each patient they met that day. And for Gabriel Lamas, he pointed out that the system he uses is not very easy to navigate and it’s actually a fairly tedious system that he has to tackle. Not only him, but this seems to be a trend across the board. This can put a lot of stress on the provider as there is just an unreasonable amount of paperwork that has to get done in abnormal time frames. It doesn’t end there either because on top of all of that, they usually have multiple patients, so this can affect the quality of the care they’re able to provide to each individual. The key areas he proposed the use of AI in are things such as pre-assessments, collection of patient data, and other general administrative tasks, which would help to ease some of the pressure of the providers so they could do better in the actual therapy part.
To be blunt, I already anticipated the responses I got from those who participated– mainly due to prior experience in discussing this topic. We live in a time where we are advancing rapidly in our technology and many people are weary of it. I talk to people all the time who feel as though their phones are listening to them; that’s why when you’re talking about coffee, you randomly start noticing an increase in Dunkin’ commercials! So, this is to say, I understand the concerns people have about it. And I do notice a change in our culture as we start to delve more into this new technology. People don’t seem to be trying as hard as they used to, which is sort of the downside to it all. Platforms like Grammarly and ChatGPT exist, which can write entire essays for you. It requires little to no though effort, which kind of takes away from the integrity of work. However, I can’t deny that AI can be useful. All three groups talked about the ways in which AI is helping or can help our society to advance.
I thought everyone did an exceptional job for this project. Two things I really enjoy about this class have to do with the organization of it all: the class leaders and the fact that we keep the same groups for the whole semester. The class leaders, especially Gabriela, helped us so much this time around. This project was a bit more of a challenge since we had to do research and there was a lot of information to cover, but Gabriela was always there to facilitate the process and she was also very responsive whenever I needed her. And another thing I appreciate is being able to keep the same group because we’re all really familiar with each other now, and we’re a team. Everyone is pretty accustomed to each other, so it sort of eliminates that initial awkwardness you have when being assigned a group. The members of my group are also all engaged in their success, which means they’re also invested in the group’s success as a whole. Every member is respectful of each other and each other's time. It’s like a fresh cup of water on a hot day when you get a group like that because too often do you find yourself in a group where most people are just “Missing In Action” or in disagreement on everything. That’s not the case with my group– from laying out group roles to designing our slides, we all respect one another and facilitate the process.
Overall, I enjoyed this opportunity to research Artificial Intelligence since I never really looked into it that much before. But seeing now how it’s changing the world, I think it is important to stay educated on what it is and also be up to date on new developments. In addition, I enjoyed the use of new research methods. I have never conducted an interview or a survey before, but I’d like to think it was an important addition to the presentation because it offered a different perspective to the whole topic, and it allowed us to gauge a better understanding of how our community responds to this current matter. So all in all, I consider this to be another accomplishment of our team and I look forward to all future projects I will have with this group. May we continue to grow together intellectually as the semester progresses!
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