{"title":"Commentary: Trustworthy and ethical AI in digital mental healthcare – wishful thinking or tangible goal?","authors":"Ellen Svensson , Walter Osika , Per Carlbring","doi":"10.1016/j.invent.2025.100844","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The use of AI in digital mental healthcare promises to make treatments more effective, accessible, and scalable than ever before. At the same time, the use of AI opens a myriad of ethical concerns, including the lack of transparency, the risk of bias leading to increasing social inequalities, and the risk of responsibility gaps. This raises a crucial question: Can we rely on these systems to deliver care that is both ethical and effective? In attempts to regulate and ensure the safe usage of AI-powered tools, calls to trustworthy AI systems have become central. However, the use of terms such as “trust” and “trustworthiness” risks increasing anthropomorphization of AI systems, attaching human moral activities, such as trust, to artificial systems. In this article, we propose that terms such as “trustworthiness” be used with caution regarding AI and that when used, they should reflect an AI system's ability to consistently demonstrate measurable adherence to ethical principles, such as respect for human autonomy, nonmaleficence, fairness, and transparency. On this approach, trustworthy and ethical AI has the possibility of becoming a tangible goal rather than wishful thinking.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48615,"journal":{"name":"Internet Interventions-The Application of Information Technology in Mental and Behavioural Health","volume":"41 ","pages":"Article 100844"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Internet Interventions-The Application of Information Technology in Mental and Behavioural Health","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214782925000454","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The use of AI in digital mental healthcare promises to make treatments more effective, accessible, and scalable than ever before. At the same time, the use of AI opens a myriad of ethical concerns, including the lack of transparency, the risk of bias leading to increasing social inequalities, and the risk of responsibility gaps. This raises a crucial question: Can we rely on these systems to deliver care that is both ethical and effective? In attempts to regulate and ensure the safe usage of AI-powered tools, calls to trustworthy AI systems have become central. However, the use of terms such as “trust” and “trustworthiness” risks increasing anthropomorphization of AI systems, attaching human moral activities, such as trust, to artificial systems. In this article, we propose that terms such as “trustworthiness” be used with caution regarding AI and that when used, they should reflect an AI system's ability to consistently demonstrate measurable adherence to ethical principles, such as respect for human autonomy, nonmaleficence, fairness, and transparency. On this approach, trustworthy and ethical AI has the possibility of becoming a tangible goal rather than wishful thinking.
期刊介绍:
Official Journal of the European Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ESRII) and the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII).
The aim of Internet Interventions is to publish scientific, peer-reviewed, high-impact research on Internet interventions and related areas.
Internet Interventions welcomes papers on the following subjects:
• Intervention studies targeting the promotion of mental health and featuring the Internet and/or technologies using the Internet as an underlying technology, e.g. computers, smartphone devices, tablets, sensors
• Implementation and dissemination of Internet interventions
• Integration of Internet interventions into existing systems of care
• Descriptions of development and deployment infrastructures
• Internet intervention methodology and theory papers
• Internet-based epidemiology
• Descriptions of new Internet-based technologies and experiments with clinical applications
• Economics of internet interventions (cost-effectiveness)
• Health care policy and Internet interventions
• The role of culture in Internet intervention
• Internet psychometrics
• Ethical issues pertaining to Internet interventions and measurements
• Human-computer interaction and usability research with clinical implications
• Systematic reviews and meta-analysis on Internet interventions