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Tobias Thejll-Madsen: The Chatbot Will See You Now — Mental Health in the Age of AI

Event artwork for Tobias Thejll-Madsen: The Chatbot Will See You Now — Mental Health in the Age of AI

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About this event

What to expect

Explore the benefits, risks and safeguards of AI chatbots for mental health in this evidence-led talk at The Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh.

Can a chatbot provide meaningful support?

When people face difficult moments, some now turn to generative AI for advice, companionship and emotional support. Services such as ChatGPT are increasingly used without a therapist,or any other human,in the loop. This creates an important possibility: digital support may reach people where professional waiting lists are long or no therapist is available. It also raises difficult questions about reliability, safety and human connection.

In The Chatbot Will See You Now: Mental Health in the Age of AI, Dr Tobias Thejll-Madsen will examine how we can assess whether AI systems are genuinely capable of supporting users and whether effective safeguards can prevent accidental harm. The talk will consider questions including:

  • How can we test claims about an AI chatbot’s ability to understand and respond to emotion?
  • What benefits might digital services offer when access to professional support is limited?
  • How can developers and researchers identify and reduce the risk of harmful responses?
  • Is it possible to build adequate safeguards for sensitive mental health conversations?
  • What could relying on AI for companionship mean for the ways people connect with one another?

Rather than offering simplistic answers, the session is designed to encourage critical thinking about a fast-developing and consequential use of artificial intelligence.

About the speaker

Dr Tobias Thejll-Madsen holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow focused on methodological challenges in affective computing,the interdisciplinary field concerned with enabling computers to recognise, model and respond to human emotion. His work develops rigorous testing methods grounded in psychological theory, helping ensure that claims about AI capabilities are accurate and evidence-based.

He currently works with the University of Edinburgh as a teacher at Edinburgh Futures Institute and a senior research affiliate with the Centre for Technomoral Futures.

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