Harvard Developed AI Identifies the Shortest Path to Human Happiness
By DEEP LONGEVITY LTD
The researchers created a digital model of psychology aimed to improve mental health. The system offers superior personalization and identifies the shortest path toward a cluster of mental stability for any individual.
Deep
Longevity, in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, presents a deep
learning approach to mental health.
Deep Longevity has published a paper in Aging-US outlining a
machine learning approach to human psychology in collaboration with Nancy
Etcoff, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School, an authority on
happiness and beauty.
The authors created two digital models of human psychology based
on data from the Midlife in the United States study.
The first model is an ensemble of deep neural networks that predicts respondents’ chronological age and psychological well-being in 10 years using information from a psychological survey. This model depicts the trajectories of the human mind as it ages. It also demonstrates that the capacity to form meaningful connections, as well as mental autonomy and environmental mastery, develops with age. It also suggests that the emphasis on personal progress is constantly declining, but the sense of having a purpose in life only fades after 40-50 years. These results add to the growing body of knowledge on socioemotional selectivity and hedonic adaptation in the context of adult personality development.
The second model is a self-organizing map that was created to serve as the foundation for a recommendation engine for mental health applications. This unsupervised learning algorithm splits all respondents into clusters depending on their likelihood of developing depression and determines the shortest path toward a cluster of mental stability for any individual. Alex Zhavoronkov, the chief longevity officer of Deep Longevity, elaborates, “Existing mental health applications offer generic advice that applies to everyone yet fits no one. We have built a system that is scientifically sound and offers superior personalization.”
To demonstrate this system’s potential, Deep Longevity has
released a web service FuturSelf, a free online application that lets users
take the psychological test described in the original publication. At the end
of the assessment, users receive a report with insights aimed at improving
their long-term mental well-being and can enroll in a guidance program that
provides them with a steady flow of AI-chosen recommendations. Data obtained on
FuturSelf will be used to further develop Deep Longevity’s digital approach to
mental health.
FuturSelf is a free online mental health service that offers
guidance based on a psychological profile assessment by AI. The core of
FuturSelf is represented by a self-organizing map that classifies respondents
and identifies the most suitable ways to improve one’s well-being. Credit:
Fedor Galkin
A leading biogerontology expert, professor Vadim Gladyshev from
Harvard Medical School, comments on the potential of FuturSelf:
“This study offers an interesting perspective on psychological
age, future well-being, and risk of depression, and demonstrates a novel
application of machine learning approaches to the issues of psychological
health. It also broadens how we view aging and transitions through life stages
and emotional states.”
The authors plan to continue studying human psychology in the
context of aging and long-term well-being. They are working on a follow-up
study on the effect of happiness on physiological measures of aging.
The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging.
Reference: “Optimizing future well-being with artificial
intelligence: self-organizing maps (SOMs) for the identification of islands of
emotional stability” by Fedor Galkin, Kirill Kochetov, Michelle Keller, Alex
Zhavoronkov and Nancy Etcoff, 20 June 2022, Aging-US.
DOI: 10.18632/aging.204061
