National Union of Healthcare Workers convenes leading experts to discuss the benefits, risks, and ethics of Artificial Intelligence in behavioral health care
Webinar hosted in partnership with the Steinberg Institute, the California Psychological Association, and the National Association of Social Workers California Chapter
Emeryville, CA), The National Union of Healthcare Workers, in partnership with the Steinberg Institute, the California Psychological Association, and the National Association of Social Workers California Chapter, is hosting a webinar with three leading experts on the intersection of behavioral health care and artificial intelligence (AI).
WHO/WHAT: An online discussion with three leading experts (info below) on AI and mental health care.
WHEN: Thursday, October 30, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The webinar is open to reporters as well as mental health professionals. To register, please contact Maggie Sisco at msisco@nuhw.org or 989-802-1261.
NUHW has the largest membership of private-sector mental health professionals in the nation, representing about 6,000 psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and psychiatric nurses, including more than 4,700 at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii.
With major employers already integrating artificial intelligence protocols into the mental healthcare they provide patients, NUHW is joining with other leading mental health advocacy organizations to hear from a wide range of experts on the benefits, risks and ethics of artificial intelligence in behavioral health care.
The webinar is being held as Kaiser Permanente is proposing in contract negotiations with 2,400 NUHW-represented mental health providers in Northern California to eliminate language that the giant HMO had agreed to previously that new technologies such as AI not be used to “replace” workers.
“When it comes to artificial intelligence, our core principles are set in stone: mental health care is human work that must be provided by humans and any new technology should be focused on helping human caregivers do their work, not replacing their work,” NUHW President Emeritus Sal Rosselli said. “Mental health workers need a seat at the table when it comes to how artificial intelligence will be incorporated into their work, and that’s why it’s incumbent on us as a union to capture a full picture of what’s happening in the field.”
The moderated discussion will feature the three panelists below:
- Jodi Halpern, MD, PhD: Halpern is both the Chancellor’s Chair and Professor of Bioethics at UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public. Halpern’s research brings together psychiatry, philosophy, and affective forecasting to examine how innovative technologies such as gene editing and artificial intelligence transform relationships and society in unexpected way.
- Diyi Yang PhD: Yang is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford, affiliated with the Stanford NLP Group, Stanford HCI Group, Stanford AI Lab (SAIL), and Stanford Human Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Her focus is on Socially Aware NLP, Large Language Models (LLMs) and Human-AI Interaction, with a focus on how LLMs can augment human capabilities across research, work and well-being.
- Nick Jacobson-PhD: Jacobson is an Associate Professor in the departments of Biomedical Data Science, Psychiatry, and Computer Science at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine. He also serves as the Director of the Treatment Development and Evaluation Core within the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health and directs the AI and Mental Health: Innovation in Technology Guided Healthcare (AIM HIGH) Laboratory.
# # #
The National Union of Healthcare Workers represents 19,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawai’i, including approximately 6,000 behavioral health workers.
