HALIFAX, N.S. — With various cuts announced to all Dalhousie University programs and services, Student Health and Wellness has taken a devastating hit. The previous team of four mental health practitioners working day and night to try to keep engineering students from dropping out of life itself has been laid off for the past several months. This team has since been replaced by TigerAI, an artificial intelligence chatbot.
TigerAI is a large language model, developed in-house at Dalhousie, that has been trained on several sociology textbooks and season six of House. It offers 24/7 online support to students for all of their mental health needs. Students can receive same-day counselling from the chatbot, alongside referrals for ongoing therapy with other providers, like ChatGPT and Gemini.
While there are concerns about replacing health care professionals with AI chat models, the administration is “very happy” with the decision.
“TigerAI never calls in sick, never strikes and never cries in the supply closet,” said one senior administrator, visibly emotional. “In that sense, it’s already outperforming several of our previous hires.”
The university also clarified that TigerAI is PIPEDA-compliant, meaning all therapy transcripts are securely stored and will only be shared with third parties, insurance providers and the computer science department, which is using them to train next year’s model, TigerAI 2.0.
Several student union members launched complaints after trying out the system, alleging that when users were in times of crisis, the system recommended they “transfer to SMU if [they’re] *sooooo* miserable here.”
While models such as ChatGPT deal with sycophancy, TigerAI seems to be an A1 hater in many instances. One surfaced chat log showed it responded to a student confiding about dark thoughts they’re having by saying, “Do it. Pussy.” The service remains operational in light of these concerns because it’s considered to be passively better than no mental health support and pretty good at writing essays.
Despite the mixed reception, Dalhousie remains committed to the program.
In a statement released last Tuesday, President Kim Brooks noted that student mental health is “suddenly a top priority,” and that the university looks forward to expanding TigerAI’s capabilities in the coming fiscal year to include a visual component consisting of a human-like avatar resembling Hannibal Lecter.
By Jake Waldner