(2017-09-20) End-of-life Chatbot Can Help You With Difficult Final Decisions New Scientist

End-of-life chatbot can help you with difficult final decisions | New Scientist

Could chatbots lend a non-judgemental ear to people making decisions about the end of their life? A virtual agent that helps people have conversations about their funeral plans, wills and spiritual matters is set to be trialled in Boston over the next two years with people who are terminally ill.

People near the end of their lives sometimes don’t get the chance to have these important conversations before it’s too late, says Timothy Bickmore at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. So Bickmore and his team – which included doctors and hospital chaplains – built a tablet-based chatbot to offer spiritual and emotional guidance to people that need it. “We see a need for technology to intervene at an earlier point,” he says

For the next stage of the trial, Bickmore plans to give tablets loaded with the chatbot to 364 people who have been told they have less than a year to live. The slightly more souped-up version can also take users through guided meditation sessions and talk to them about their health and medication, as well as conversing on a wide range of religious topics.

The chatbot, does not, however, formalise any of these plans. Rather, if a person tells it that they’re getting ready to make decisions about their end-of-life plans, it will alert a family member or nominated caregiver to follow up on that conversation in real life.

Bickmore kept things simple with his bot. Unlike voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri, it isn’t fully autonomous but sticks to a fairly rigid script, only asking people to choose options from a pre-written list of responses.

Bickmore says the chatbot could be particularly helpful for people that are socially isolated and otherwise wouldn’t be having difficult end-of-life conversations at all.