An AI Used Facebook Data to Predict Mental Illness

It's easy to do bad things with Facebook data. From targeting ads for bizarrely specific T-shirts to manipulating an electorate, the questionable purposes to which the social media behemoth can be put are numerous. But there are also some people out there trying to use Facebook for good--or, at least, to improve the diagnosis of mental illness. On December 3, a group of researchers reported that they had managed to predict psychiatric diagnoses with Facebook data--using messages sent up to 18 months before a user received an official diagnosis. The team worked with 223 volunteers, who all gave the researchers access to their personal Facebook messages.