Canada Wants to Track Suicide Risk on Social Media with AI

A pending contract with an artificial intelligence company could mean that the Canadian government will be able to monitor social media for upticks in suicide risk using AI. The contract with the Ottawa-based AI and market research company Advanced Symbolics is to be finalized in February, CBC News reports.

Rather than focusing on individual people, Advanced Symbolics said that its goal is to identify trends in suicide risk using artificial intelligence. It could, for example, identify certain areas where suicide is likely to spike. It is set to start as a three-month pilot project.

"It'd be a bit freaky if we built something that monitors what everyone is saying and then the government contacts you and said, 'Hi, our computer AI has said we think you're likely to kill yourself,'" Kenton White, chief scientist with Advanced Symbolics, told CBC News.

The AI company stressed that it is not going to violate anyone’s privacy—rather, it will draw from public posts.

Other companies have used machine learning and AI to identify risk of suicide. As of 2017, Facebook increased its suicide prevention tools, including the scanning of language in individuals’ posts to identify risk of suicide. A Canadian research project also found that AI could be useful in preventing subway suicide attempts.

Advanced Symbolic’s approach is different since it seeks to identify trends regionally. White referenced three teens who died by suicide on Cape Breton Island in 2017.

"The spike that happened in Cape Breton, as unfortunate as it is, we can learn patterns from that," he said. White also said that they could learn from patterns in Northern communities, in college students, and the suicide crisis in Saskatchewan.

Advanced Symbolics also predicts election results. The company claims it’s the “only research firm in the world that was able to accurately predict Brexit, the Hillary and Trump election, and the Canadian election of 2015.”

The company has tested the AI that it would use for identifying suicide risk in Canada in academic settings. A representative for Advanced Symbolics told VICE News it will now work with the government and psychiatrists to figure out exactly what language signals a real issue and train it further.

Really makes you think about how AI will handle the hordes of people on Twitter who post some iteration of “I wanna die lol” every other minute. Welcome to 2018?

If you are struggling with depression or suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US) at 1-800-273-8255 or the Canada Suicide Prevention Service at 1-833-456-4566.

With files from Tamara Khandaker.