Event Details:
Join us on September 9th 12-1pm PT for a panel discussion on "Responding to Suicide Risk in the Age of AI", co-sponsored with Stanford University's Mental Health Technology and Innovation Hub (Tech Hub). Panelists will include: Dr. Gabi Khazanov, PhD of Yeshiva University, Leslie Adams, PhD, MPH of Stanford University, Claire Leibowicz, Director of AI, Trust, and Society at the Partnership on AI (PAI), and Xuan Zhao, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Flourish Science.
This panel will bring together experts in suicide prevention, responsible AI, health equity, and evidence-based technology development to explore the opportunities and risks of using AI to support people experiencing distress. Panelists will discuss emerging research on how chatbots currently respond to suicide risk, their ability to recognize the varied and culturally specific ways people may communicate distress, the challenges of balancing safety, trust, and continued engagement, and opportunities for AI to provide support while maintaining connection to human care. The conversation will also examine whose experiences may be missing from current research, how AI tools can be designed to be culturally responsive and trustworthy, and what kinds of research, evaluation, and cross-sector collaboration are needed to move the field forward responsibly.
About the Speakers:
Gabi Khazanov, PhD, is an assistant professor at Yeshiva University, a licensed clinical psychologist, and director of the Treatment Engagement and Access Lab. Her research aims to enhance patient and provider access to and engagement in treatments to prevent suicide and address problematic substance use.
Leslie Adams, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and Director of the AMPLIFY Lab (Adaptive Mental Health and Prevention: Leveraging Innovation for Youth). Her research examines how social and structural conditions shape mental health and suicide risk among Black youth and other historically marginalized communities. Using community-engaged research, real-time data, human-centered design, and emerging AI technologies, Dr. Adams develops culturally responsive approaches to identifying and preventing suicide and helping young people live healthy, connected lives. Her work combines user-centered design with smartphone-based assessment, passive sensing, and AI-enabled tools to characterize dynamic changes in suicide risk in real time and develop adaptive, culturally responsive interventions tailored to young people’s needs and contexts.
Claire Leibowicz is Director of AI, Trust, and Society at the Partnership on AI and a part-time doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, where her research focuses on how to govern content in the AI age. As a practitioner, Claire has spent over a decade building multistakeholder strategies at the intersection of AI and society -- with a specific focus on how AI impacts trust in information and psychological well-being. At PAI, Claire led the development of PAI's Responsible Practices for Synthetic Media framework, adopted by organizations including OpenAI, TikTok, the BBC, and Code for Africa, and now leads a team working on AI and Psychological Well-Being. Claire was a Fellow focused on AI governance at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center and her work has been featured in MIT Tech Review, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and other media outlets. She holds a BA in Psychology and Computer Science from Harvard and a master's from Oxford, where she studied as a Clarendon Scholar.
Xuan Zhao, PhD, is the CEO and co-founder of Flourish Science, a public benefit corporation focused on building evidence-based, safety-first AI for continuous mental health support. Dr. Zhao is also a Research Affiliate at Stanford University’s Department of Psychology and School of Medicine. With training in experimental social psychology, cognitive science, and human-robot interaction, her work focuses on the psychology of social connection, well-being, and ethical AI. She has extensive experience designing science-based digital, physical, and experiential products that translate research insights into practical tools and foster individual and social well-being. Her research has been published in leading academic journals and featured in major media outlets, including TIME, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, the BBC, and NPR.
Moderator:
Besty Stade, PhD is a computational clinical psychologist and research scientist at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI working in the Computational Psychology and Well-Being and Fidelity, Adaptation, Sustainability, and Training labs. She did her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in the Boundaries of Anxiety and Depression lab. She is part of the World Well-Being Project, and her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation. Her training in evidence-based therapies includes CBT for depression and insomnia, exposure therapy for the anxiety disorders, exposure and response prevention for OCD, and cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure for PTSD. She uses LLM, NLP, and machine learning to address questions about access to EBPs and detecting psychological processes in human language.
Register here: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5kJ6QyyrQbGDhSNbNtJiWg
CME credits: You may be eligible to receive CME credits for attending this webinar. More information will be provided at the start of the event. If you have questions, please reach out to CREATE (create-alacrity-center@stanford.edu).
Recording: Watch the recording here.