Can you talk a little bit about that research and maybe how we distinguish between what truly supports mental health versus what might be harmful?

Sure, so I think what we've wanted to do was really look at these platforms that are providing these kind of chatbots or even these companions and what they purport to be able to do for our youth.

And what we wanted to ensure was after we look at the guardrails that were put in place, how are they actually really supporting and is there a potential issue or challenge with these tools when you kind of test the guardrails out.

So in looking at kind of this rubric question, we propose like four main questions.

The first one is, does the product treat itself as a bridge or a destination? So again, I mentioned earlier, the most effective products are going to bridge to real clinicians, real peer-reviewed information, crisis lines, they're playing a fundamentally different role versus trying to be the relationship, right? An AI risk assessment that we released with the Stanford Medicine Brainstorm Lab last year also found that leading AI chatbots consistently fail to recognize and appropriately respond to mental health conditions affecting young people.

Now, we heard earlier today that most young people, they're leaning in on these AI chatbots as a place to go.

They're affirming them sycophantically.

Merv, is there in the research anything to point out the creativity, lack of or gaining or increase of creativity when it comes to using these tools?

Um, so what do you think, to, to start off with, Merv, like, why do you think we're seeing such a shift, um, you know, whether it be administrative policy, whether it be politicians talking about it on social media, about, you know, either the, the drawback of technology or it's, um, focusing on going back to tried-and-true old practices? Why do you think there's this shift and this tech reset moment that we're having right now?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, because there is.

There's, there's, there are big conversations right now around tech, and I think, I think if we think about the last, like, six years, I think there's been this big, uh, recognition of tech in the classroom, especially after lockdown when all this tech funneled in.

The reality is, before that, we were doing what we could to try and bring more technology into the classroom 'cause it held so much promise, and there was real opportunity in terms of, like, scaling the different things that we wanted to be able to do and, uh, provide in terms of, like, um, experiences and, and, and access to resources and content to all of our students in ways that were only happening in communities that had means, that had money, uh, that had investment.

And so we wanted to see more technology come into the hands of our kids.

And then we had this lockdown, and then we said, "Okay, now we need-- everyone needs access 'cause no one's in the classroom." But the way that things rolled out really didn't paint, I, I, I think, the best picture for anyone just kind of seeing it from afar.

... anyway.