Artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly expanded in 2023, and it’s here to stay. ChatGPT, Snapchat and altered photos and videos are just some of the AI encounters people have on their devices daily.

AI has many positives. But experts say when it comes to health advice, take it from a trained human being, not a robot. And if you’re scared of “the rise of the robots” – as they say in Hollywood – there are ways to cope.

“You’re absolutely normal to be anxious when there’s the first stirrings of big shifts in technology or other things that might change our life,” says Ari Lakritz, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at OSF HealthCare who says he sees these concerns often.

Coming to grips with technology advances

Common fears include technology making your job obsolete or providing you with misinformation. Dr. Lakritz suggests being proactive to the changes, not reactive. Learn how AI is changing your job or hobbies.

“See if you might be able to be part of that. Start integrating some of that into your day-to-day practice,” Dr. Lakritz says.

AI can be a time-saver, too.

“It has potential to streamline things we don’t like to do, giving us more time and energy to do things we want or things we feel are important,” Dr. Lakritz says.

For example, it may take you an hour to do an online search for sources for your college essay. If ChatGPT can do it in minutes, you might have time to take that afternoon walk or meet a friend for lunch, boosting your mental and physical health and spurring creativity.

It’s also not our first time dealing with digital unknowns. Remember the supposed Y2K bug around the turn of the millennium? Fears of computer clocks malfunctioning and worse didn’t materialize, and experts took away lessons for the next big technology shift, like AI. And a silver lining of the Y2K anxiety, Dr. Lakritz says, is that it got people learning about technology.

Don’t go to a robot for mental health care

Snapchat, the photo messaging application popular with young people, recently rolled out a chatbot called “My AI.” It’s a way for people to connect with someone when they have no one else.

“My AI can answer a burning trivia question, offer advice on the perfect gift for your BFF’s birthday, help plan a hiking trip for a long weekend, or suggest what to make for dinner,” Snapchat’s website says.

But the company concedes: “It’s possible My AI’s responses may include biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading content. Because My AI is an evolving feature, you should always independently check answers provided by My AI before relying on any advice, and you should not share confidential or sensitive information.”

Some parents and mental health experts have picked up on that concern, too. They worry young people are getting inadequate mental health advice from a robot.

“That’s like Googling your symptoms when you’re sick instead of going to a real doctor,” Dr. Lakritz says with a hint of dismay. “You’ll get a great deal of information, but there will be very little guidance about how to use that information and which information is more applicable to you.”

If talking about your mental health virtually is your preferred way to go, there are more legitimate options than Snapchat, Dr. Lakritz says. First and foremost, your health care provider may offer virtual visits. Otherwise, talk to a provider or trusted adult about online, third-party counseling options.

“These are programs that have been tested and vetted. There’s oversight and accountability. There’s research behind it,” Dr. Lakritz explains. “Whereas with an AI assistant, it’s not clear the source of information. It’s not clear how to use that information best.”

Will AI and chatrooms replace in-person mental health care? Don’t count on it, Dr. Lakritz predicts. The human connection of being in a room with someone can’t be understated, he says.

When in doubt

When the content on your device is just too much to handle, turn it off, set it aside and take a break.

Look for these warning signs:

“Do you feel you’re doing too much of it? Do you find your use of technology is taking over other interests in your life? Have you tried to cut down but have not been able to? Do you find that using so much technology causes you to stress or dysfunction?” Dr. Lakritz asks.

Most devices have settings that can limit screen time. Parents should set boundaries with their children’s device use. Dr. Lakritz says you can even share your browsing or chat history with a trusted adult so they can make sure you’re using technology appropriately.

If your technology use is causing significant mental health problems, talk to your primary care provider or mental health provider. You can also call 9-8-8 to reach the Nation Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Learn more

Learn more about behavioral and mental health on the OSF HealthCare website.

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The pros and cons of social media are well documented. It allows you to connect with friends and pursue passions, but bullying and misinformation can be rampant.

But can frequent social media use lead to changes in brain development during the formative adolescent years? A recent study suggests so, but much more investigation is needed, says Karna Sherwood, MD, a neurologist at OSF HealthCare in Alton, Illinois.

The study tracked 169 sixth and seventh graders and found those who habitually checked social media were more sensitive to rewards and punishments. To view it a different way, kids who constantly refresh Facebook hoping the likes on their post will go up may be more impulsive to seek out real-life recognition.

“At a certain point, 10 likes or 20 likes are no longer gratifying enough,” Dr. Sherwood says. “And then you have to find another way to get even more likes or more appreciation.”

That “another way” could lead to risky behaviors such as substance abuse. But Dr. Sherwood says more study is needed to conclusively make the link. Just how much does our life in the digital realm affect our life away from the device?

“A follow up study would certainly investigate if [frequent social media use] has an effect on rates of anxiety and depression,” says Dr. Sherwood. “Could this affect addiction? And what interventions could be taken to nullify those behaviors?

“As a society, if we want to raise happy and healthy people in an age where we are getting better technologically, what steps do we need to take?”

Until then, Dr. Sherwood has some good advice no matter your age or number of Twitter followers.

“Until you get the rest of the information, it’s better to have some degree of regulation,” and restraint with social media, Dr. Sherwood says.

Learn more about how the brain works on the OSF HealthCare website.

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Kids' screen time: How much is too much?

Jump ARCHES research and development program awarded nearly $1.8 million in funding across 16 projects to address a variety of medical challenges. Many of the grant awards address issues dominating the news, including health care inequity, misinformation on social media, and the need for earlier detection of anxiety and viruses for improved treatment.

“These projects leverage the strengths of OSF HealthCare and our academic partners who are committed to practical solutions that can be deployed throughout health care to make a difference in early diagnosis, personalized treatment and disease prevention,” according to John Vozenilek, MD, vice president/chief medical officer, OSF Innovation & Digital Health. 

Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler, PhD, interim director of the UIUC Health Care Engineering Systems Center and professor of mechanical science and engineering, says some of the grants build on
past successful Jump ARCHES research that is driving innovative solutions.

“Those projects will advance efforts to show proof of concept and scalability as a go-to-market solution to benefit partners and many others in the health care industry,” says Hsiao-Weckler. “Other projects lay the foundation for novel initiatives that will take time to develop but that show promise for transforming approaches to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and health outcomes.”

The Jump ARCHES program is a collaboration between OSF HealthCare, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria. The funding supports research across multiple disciplines including clinicians, engineers and social scientists focused on rapidly developing solutions to advance medical training and health care delivery.

SEE THE FULL LIST OF PROJECTS AWARDED GRANTS through the Jump ARCHES program.

Highlight Project: Creating an application for health care providers to counter misinformation on social media

Health experts worry Twitter owner Elon Musk’s decision to drop a ban on misinformation will exacerbate the growing problem of health misinformation circulating on social media. Health providers can’t keep up with the latest misinformation so they’re often left with few options to respond to patients’ assertions or questions. This project will develop and deploy a stream of cost-effective, real-time fact-checking services through an application that provides physicians and other health care professionals with early-warning information tied to a variety of diseases, treatments and remedies. READ THE STORY. 

University of Illinois sociology professor Kevin Leicht, PhD, recalls a time during the COVID-19 pandemic when during a conversation, someone insisted only six people had died from the highly-infectious and rapidly-circulating virus. It was clear disinformation was driving people to doubt the potential deadly nature of the virus.

But even before the pandemic, researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) had begun work on researching the spread of medical misinformation. Leicht, who is also science team lead at the Chicago-based Discovery Partners Institute (DPI), is co-leading work funded by DPI and a more than $100,000 Jump ARCHES newly-awarded grant to develop a software application for health care professionals to receive real-time alerts about misinformation on social media. The project builds on misinformation research and past National Science Foundation and Jump ARCHES-funded efforts to identify the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and other debunked medical research.

Leicht says he and fellow researchers investigated what was available to identify and prevent the spread of bad information on social media. Colleagues were a bit surprised there wasn’t a more robust and commercially-available software platform. But, Leicht says he often reminds his team that research and development is usually more difficult than anyone anticipates.

“If this were easy, somebody would have done it already,” he says, laughing. “We were both surprised nobody tried to have done it. And then when we got into it. ‘Wow, it's really difficult.’”

Leicht points out that social media platforms don’t want to be in the content-identification and moderation business because it is so complex, and as in the case of Twitter, is also seen as quelling free speech.

Right now, health care providers are limited in their ability to answer patients’ questions or to counter misinformation by searching fact-checking websites such as snopes.com or factcheck.org. Leicht and his colleagues are using natural language processing, machine learning, data mining, specific information filters and retrieval methods that expand and automate the effort to identify inaccurate health information trending on social media.

“What our project actually does is take not only the pre-existing fact-checked data and query it all in one place, it brings it forward in a user-friendly fashion. But then it's also trying to come up with a way of adding to this data in a way that's faster than having a human fact checker just scan the web all the time, looking for what the new piece of misinformation is.” 

Leicht says computer science and data expertise will be leveraged with what social scientists know about how cultural and political fragmentation impact the spread of misinformation and how effective communication can become an antidote.

Co-lead investigator Mary Stapel, MD, is Community Care lead physician for OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center and assistant program director for the combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency at the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria (UICOMP). Dr. Stapel says an innovative software application could make a significant difference, especially if alerts are easily available within software programs clinicians use every day.

Many community health nurses and digitally-enabled health care workers would also find the real-time misinformation alerts helpful. Those individuals work to build trust, particularly with those who have suffered past trauma or unequal treatment in their experience with the health care system. Dr. Stapel says community-based organizations also engage in “trust transfers,” when they invite health care professionals to educate their clients and work collaboratively to identify the source of misinformation and publicly counter it.

Stopping viral spread

The alerts could allow organizations to stop bad information from going viral.

“If we can even get ahead of that – and know what information is circulating and start feeding out more accurate information ahead of time through our community partners; that really could be a game changer when we're thinking about things like pandemics and infectious disease," says Dr. Stapel.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Stapel says she learned that the problem of medical misinformation impacts everyone, regardless of their education level or other socio-economic factors.

“There was an interesting turn during the pandemic, where after education – large-scale campaigns and initiatives were put out around vaccination; there actually was sort of a flip to where communities of color, lower socio-economic communities were more vaccinated than upper class, more predominantly white communities so I really think it is across the spectrum.” 

Leicht says misinformation challenges many computer science and information mining techniques due to the way it changes quickly and spreads between languages and countries. It also requires human interpretation of the content identified and categorized through artificial intelligence. 

“Having humans curate that a little bit … you have content experts that look at that and say, ‘Is this dangerous or is it not? Is this trending, is it not?’ And then figuring out a way to deliver that to the final customer in a way that requires as little  interface by them as we can possibly get away with.” 

Leicht thinks it’ll take two years to get the software application completed. Researchers believe there is demand for what they’re creating. Already they have an industrial, non-profit software development partner, Meedan Labs, which creates open-source tools for creating and sharing context on digital media through verification, annotation, archival and translation services. The Discovery Partners Institute will also be involved in making the product commercially available not only for health care providers, but eventually for patients via electronic medical portals such as OSF MyChart.

Video clips with Kevin Leicht, sociology professor UIUC

Video clips with Dr. Mary Stapel, Community Care lead physician for OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center and assistant program director for the combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency UICOMP