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According to a recent survey by the Mental Health Foundation, as many as one in four UK adults admit they feel lonely either some or all of the time.

Sangita Myska asks if one solution be a chatbot. Our innovator Eugenia Kuyda thinks so. Originally from Russia, she is the founder and CEO of Replika, a company that is building Artificial Intelligence to help people feel better.

Loneliness has a significant affect not only on mental health, but also on physical health. In fact, studies show that it can take years off a lifespan. Kuyda started Replika to cope with grief and loneliness herself. After the tragic death of a close friend, she fed thousands of their text message exchanges into an AI model to recreate him virtually.

The therapeutic effect that she felt in grief was mirrored by others when she made the chatbot public. Users began to share personal and emotional information with this new companion, and now Replika has 20 million users in the English-speaking world.

Kuyda claims that the happiness and wellbeing of its users is central to her business model. But what are the risks to vulnerable people? Are we ready to place our care in the hands of an algorithm?

Contributors include:

Louis Stupple-Harris, a researcher on emerging technologies at Nesta, an innovation agency for social good
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Lina Mookerjee, a psychotherapist based in Carlisle

Verena Rieser, Professor听of Artificial Intelligence at听Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and co-founder of the conversational AI company ALANA.

Producer: Dom Byrne
A Whistledown production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4

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