New AI can Reduce Risk of Suicide Among Youth NewsGram

In a bid to help mitigate the risk of suicide especially among the homeless youth, a team of researchers at University of California (USC) has turned their focus towards Artificial Intelligence (AI). Phebe Vayanos, an associate director at USC's Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS), and her team have been working over the last couple of years to design an algorithm capable of identifying who in a given real-life social group would be the best persons to be trained as "gatekeepers" capable of identifying warning signs of suicide and how to respond. "Our idea was to leverage real-life social network information to build a support network of strategically positioned individuals that can'watch-out' for their friends and refer them to help as needed," Vayanos said. Vayanos and study's lead author Aida Rahmattalabi investigated the potential of social connections such as friends, relatives and acquaintances to help mitigate the risk of suicide. "We want to ensure that a maximum number of people are being watched out for, taking into account resource limitations and uncertainties of open world deployment," Vayanos said.