Mawulolo K. Ameko

Mawulolo K. Ameko, Sonia Baee, Laura E. Barnes

Loneliness does not only have emotional implications on a person but also on his/her well-being. The study of loneliness has been challenging and largely inconclusive in findings because of the several factors that might correlate to the phenomenon. We present one approach to predicting this event by discovering patterns of language associated with loneliness. Our results show insights and promising directions for mining text from instant messaging to predict loneliness.

Sonia Baee, Mark Rucker, Anna Baglione et al.

Virtual coaching has rapidly evolved into a foundational component of modern clinical practice. At a time when healthcare professionals are in short supply and the demand for low-cost treatments is ever-increasing, virtual health coaches (VHCs) offer intervention-on-demand for those limited by finances or geographic access to care. More recently, AI-powered virtual coaches have become a viable complement to human coaches. However, the push for AI-powered coaching systems raises several important issues for researchers, designers, clinicians, and patients. In this paper, we present a novel framework to guide the design and development of virtual coaching systems. This framework augments a traditional data science pipeline with four key guiding goals: reliability, fairness, engagement, and ethics.