Sometimes beauty lies in our inability to completely understand it. You and I could look at the same artwork and take away entirely different messages, and it could very well be the case that neither message would be what the artist intended to say. Evergreen.AI reminds me of this, except that it is neither art nor beautiful, but largely misunderstood and misrepresented. Both the audience and the developers seem to be at odds not only over what it is, but what it could be or was intended to be to begin with.
This was most obvious when Center for Technology and Behavioral Health Dartmouth director Lisa Marsch said in a recent article that Evergreen is “not for students struggling with mental health crises” and will not be a replacement for conventional therapy services. She then claimed that it is not AI therapy, or a mental health chatbox, but is “a tool, ideally, that any undergraduate who’s interested could use once it’s out of research and testing.”
To describe Evergreen as a tool that can be used if one is interested is beyond unspecific. The claim that Evergreen is not for students struggling with mental health crises is particularly alarming, considering that the first announcement itself contained the phrase “mental health” a total of 12 times. It also seems that both Heinz and Marsch disagree about Evergreen’s purpose, because Heinz goes on to say that if they see that somebody is using it whose severity of mental health crisis is higher than what the app can manage, then they have off-ramps for that, which seems to imply that the app is meant to handle at least some form of mental health crises, albeit of a lesser severity.
Strangely, the claim that Evergreen is not meant to replace existing infrastructure presumes that Dartmouth’s current wellness services are of an adequate quality. If that is the case, and Evergreen isn’t adding all that much to the Dartmouth mental health experience, then why don’t we simply spend more money on skilled therapists? Let’s perform a simple calculation.
Evergreen has raised $5 million in funding and aims to raise at least $16.5 million. At present, Dartmouth’s Counseling Center is staffed by approximately 13 staff counselors, eight of whom are licensed psychologists. The typical therapist salary in the Upper Valley is about $90,000 per year. If Dartmouth spent the $5 million in a single year to hire clinicians at about $90k base with typical benefits and overhead, it could hire around 40 clinicians for a year. For me, that statistic and all the evidence in the news article are enough substance to be skeptical about Evergreen and its promise.
That said, I can say with some conviction that Evergreen will do wonders for Dartmouth’s image. Evergreen, in theory, checks all the right boxes including ‘wellness’ and ‘AI’, even though we now know it’s “not meant for mental health crises” and is only a pre-scripted chatbot built on student-fed dialogues. Especially amidst a time when perception carries significant weight in higher education, Evergreen’s image is precisely why its funding comes not from seasoned venture capitalists or people at the forefront of technology or medicine, but from alumni and parents. Instead of investing in a proven wellness tool, these donors are investing in a marketing tool. It is a marketing victory, funded by those most susceptible to the College’s brand narrative, while the unglamorous work of expanding clinical care is sidelined.
The resources poured into Evergreen represent a profound misallocation. The College faces a well-documented mental health crisis characterized by long wait times and overburdened staff. The solution to this crisis is not a vague, AI-powered “tool,” not because using AI to research ways to improve student wellness is necessarily wrong, but because to call Evergreen “AI,” “cutting edge,” or “first of its kind” would be a gross mischaracterization of what it actually is. The millions of dollars earmarked for developing and testing an ambiguous pre-structured chatbot should be rerouted toward either a genuine effort to study how best to improve student wellness using technology, or to directly expand Dartmouth’s Counseling Center and ensure every student in need receives timely, competent and compassionate care from a qualified professional. We cannot keep funding an enigma.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
