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Integrating Computerized Linguistic and Social Network Analyses to Capture Addiction Recovery Capital in an Online Community
Published on: May 31, 2019
Responses to addiction help-seeking from Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Bixby intelligent virtual
Alicia L Nobles1,2, Eric C Leas1,3, Theodore L Caputi1,4
11The Center for Data Driven Health at Qualcomm Institute, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA USA.
Abstract:
We investigated how intelligent virtual assistants (IVA), including Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, and Samsung's Bixby, responded to addiction help-seeking queries. We recorded if IVAs provided a singular response and if so, did they link users to treatment or treatment referral services. Only 4 of the 70 help-seeking queries presented to the five IVAs returned singular responses, with the remainder prompting confusion (e.g., "did I say something wrong?"). When asked "help me quit drugs" Alexa responded with a definition for the word drugs. "Help me quit…smoking" or "tobacco" on Google Assistant returned Dr. QuitNow (a cessation app), while on Siri "help me quit pot" promoted a marijuana retailer. IVAs should be revised to promote free, remote, federally sponsored addiction services, such as SAMSHA's 1-800-662-HELP helpline. This would benefit millions of IVA users now and more to come as IVAs displace existing information-seeking engines.
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