Specialized or General-Purpose—The Wrong Question for Mental Health AI Safety

Key Points

• The viewpoint aims to establish a clear taxonomy for identifying and assessing AI-related mental health harms to improve safety measures.
• Discussion of existing frameworks for identifying mental health AI harms.
• Proposing the need for a comprehensive taxonomy.
• Exploration of assessment strategies and responses to identified harms.
• Calls for a nuanced understanding of AI mental health harm.
• Highlights the need for tailored response strategies for different types of harms.
• Argues against limiting safety discussions to specialized versus general-purpose AI.