LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 12: Kai Koerber and Jeff Vespa attend the LA Premiere Of "Voices Of Parkland" at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel on February 12, 2020, in Los Angeles, California.
After the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida, which killed 14 students and three staff members, survivor Kai Koerber wanted to offer support. Koerber used his enthusiasm for technology to build Joy, a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to give bite-sized mindfulness exercises suited to users' moods, after seeing his classmates' emotional challenges.
Koerber and his team's creation Joy employs a novel strategy to improve mental health: a cutting-edge algorithm that can understand a person's emotional state only from the sound of their voice, cutting across linguistic boundaries.
The tech wiz has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for years and he intended to help those dealing with loss, sorrow, and wrath practice mindfulness and well-being. Hence, he initiated the project while studying at the University of California Berkeley.
How Does Joy Work?
Joy offers brief, simple exercises, some of which take just a few seconds, so people can easily integrate mindfulness into their regular lives. Koerber stressed the app's divergence from the conventional view of mindfulness as a constrained, lonely activity, saying, "The notion of mindfulness being a solo activity or something that's confined to sitting in your room breathing is something that we're very much trying to dispel," as quoted by AP News.
App user Mohammed Zareef-Mustafa has referred to the app's voice-emotion recognition tool as "different" from the tools he has seen before. Zareef-Mustafa, Koerber's former classmate, said the app's brief, user-friendly routines helped him relax before job interviews.
When using Joy, users talk into the app, which analyzes their speech using AI to determine their emotional state and suggest appropriate activities. Users can manually pick their mood, even if the app's AI is not perfect at detecting it. If feeling "neutral," the app advises a 15-second "mindful consumption" activity or measuring laughing frequency for a week to identify pleasure moments.
Joy runs on a subscription basis, with monthly fees of $8 and annual membership savings, per WUSF. Its accuracy and efficacy are anticipated to increase as more people interact with it, as is the case with the majority of AI-driven apps.
Experts Recommend Further Studies
Despite its promise, the app's release comes with more extensive concerns about the use of artificial intelligence in mental health services and research. Although AI has shown promise in automating jobs, assisting physicians, and improving our knowledge of complicated conditions, recent research has shown serious issues with its feasibility in the real world.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the COVID-19 pandemic increased the number of people in the WHO European Region living with mental health disorders to over 150 million in 2021. AI may help organize mental health services and diagnose and monitor mental health disorders, but the research warns against promoting new AI models without comprehensive evaluation.
The "Regional Digital Health Action Plan for the WHO European Region 2023-2030" by WHO/Europe recognizes the promise of AI in healthcare while highlighting the need for innovation in predictive analytics combining big data and AI for improved health outcomes.
The study's co-author, Dr. David Novillo-Ortiz, WHO/Europe's Regional Adviser on Data and Digital Health, emphasized the importance of assessing AI's current use in mental health research to inform future developments and identify opportunities and challenges, per the global health agency's news release.
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