I have asked the Smash Street Boys to bounce off a response I made to David Brooks in the New York Times.

Brooks writes about suicide quite often. His work is excellent. This time, he is integrating the reality of AI into the examination of what makes people tick.

Tick. Tock.

Smash Street is not unfamiliar with suicide. But not as a concept. And not as an intellectualization. Both of which are fine. But it’s just not how we see suicide.

Knowing so many people as we do with HIV who have decided they have had enough.

Psychosocial health problems are always the determining factors associated with suicidal ideation, and the endemic effect of psychosocial health conditions are always confirmed in predicting suicidal ideation. Therefore, early screening of high-risk groups for suicidal ideation and more psychosocial health care among PLWHA are needed. AI does this better than humans. People living with HIV not only suffer from the disease itself but also bear the psychological pressure, economic difficulties and serious social discrimination caused by the disease, which often lead to serious psychosocial health problems, especially related to mental health. Mental health problems can negatively affect treatment, adherence to treatment, and the prognosis of the HIV infection.

AI is better at predicting suicidal behavior than professionals. The effect of psychosocial health conditions to predict suicidal ideation among PLWHA, with the factors contributing to suicidal ideation including depression, stigma, low self-esteem and poor social support. This suggests that a more integrated intervention in a combination of psychological, behavioral, and social aspects is needed to address the cross-over conditions. Also, screening, treatment, suicide education and referral services for suicidal individuals are essential. In addition, reducing HIV related stigma, and strengthening the self-esteem and social support of PLWHA, is constructive in mediating the relations between risk factors and suicide.

It is harder to kill yourself than most people realize. From 2000 through 2015, suicide rates in white men with HIV exceeded rates among white men in the general US population–and often far exceeded general-population rates. In contrast, suicide rates among black men with HIV hovered around rates in the general population of black men in most years. In an analysis of 81,014 people with HIV found that white men who did not inject drugs had a 6-fold higher suicide rate than black men with HIV who did not inject drugs.

Suicide rates are climbing in the US general population, especially among white men and people who use drugs. The number of young men who kill themselves has doubled. Researchers working with NA-ACCORD, a North American HIV cohort collaboration, conducted this study to see whether those trends hold true in people with HIV. The study focused on 81,014 HIV-positive cohort members 20 to 79 years old, including 59,919 men, 54% of them white and 46% black. In a subset of 58,961 black or white men, 26% had a drug injection history and 74% did not. The study period ran from January 2000 through December 2015. Researchers recorded suicides noted on death certificates or in electronic medical records. They used Poisson regression models to estimate adjusted incidence rate ratios (aIRR) for suicide.

AI is going to change all these numbers because we are going to have more data in order to understand ourselves.

Personally, I think most of the above is bullshit. People who want to kill themselves should be able to do and should be able to access medically assisted suicide.

Who do we think we are claiming we can step into someone else’s shoes and walk around in them and make the kind of silly moral judgements we always make in the face of things we do not understand.

I might miss my friends. But I am seeing them in my mind for what they were. Before HIV. After HIV, they wanted out. Our HIV Helper-Community goes way out of its way to stop the question being asked – WHY ARE YOU HERE – because we are most definitely not here for them. They have not as a culture built any kind of structure worth enduring. They only defend it. That people would find it insufficient to live for is to break the rules of silence. These people will never change. I regard them as the enemy. The helper people are the we will fuck you people.

My response to David Brooks.

If a thing can be exploited by a member of the human species, it will be exploited by a member of the human species. Why are you here. In life.

We never ask that question. Let alone answer it.

Employers who do not hire depressed people will be more successful than employers who do.

What is success. Success will be what AI suggests it is. Success is data.

Why are you here. In life.

I would never, ever even use the word suicide in the context of a medical setting. The legislature in the state I live in currently has an assisted suicide bill in front of it. The legislature will have to choose.

But would I ask anyone in the medical community for an opinion.

No way.

An ambulance would arrive. “Sir, you have to go with us.”

Am I being overly dramatic. No. It happens every day.

Who will be selling AI. What are the costs.

Knowing ourselves a lot more deeply is a contradiction in terms for a culture internally obsessed over what appears to be a community of vacuum. How do we put ourselves and our riches on Instagram if our actual values transcend survival. No one on Instagram is depressed. Smile for the camera. The camera and the context is everything.

AI is used to move your selfies to the cloud. Could AI roam all the clouds and make conclusions about what is photographed vis-a-vis massive data.

It already does this. It’s nothing. Why are you here. In life.

We are AI.

And we are afraid.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/opinion/artificial-intelligence-depression.html#commentsContainer&permid=101116126:101116126

Tim Barrus

Tim Barrus Blog

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