Meet Evergreen.AI, Dartmouth’s multi-million dollar cash sink designed to generically “support student success.” The investment aims to provide ready available mental health for students via a chatbot. In reality, the project is too costly, ill-defined and falls short of its lofty goals.
The cost of Evergreen.AI, sitting at $16.5 million, is funded by alumni and parent donors — a fact that some might argue justifies the cost, because it doesn’t come from any existing wellness funds. However, this claim ignores the fact that many community donors could be donating to a more practical wellness initiative instead, such as an expanded — or even new — counseling center.
Expanding existing services is not a radical idea. Many institutions across the country have expanded their mental health services. For example, Wellesley College expanded its mental health services just last year, offering a quiet study space and a new, improved mental health facility — and all for $3.5 million less than the final cost of Evergreen.AI.
Notably, Evergreen claims on its website that its aim is not to replace therapy but to be a wellness helper. Yet, their website touts how the AI is trained with over 100,000 hours of student-built therapeutic dialogue and builds on Dartmouth’s Therabot, an aptly named therapy chatbot. It seems, in pretending to do AI therapy without calling it therapy, Evergreen is trying to have its cake and eat it too.
To be fair, Evergreen attempts to distinguish itself from other therapy chatbots by offering “off-ramps” — systems that redirect people to crisis services when situations escalate. While Evergreen mentioned this to me in my capacity as a Dartmouth Student Government Senator, the details remain unknown. I haven’t encountered public advertising on these off-ramps, leaving the most important aspect of the project vague.
“We can see you immediately!” is what students seeking therapy should be able to hear after a $16.5 million investment in student wellness. Instead, they are likely to find a much less helpful AI chatbot that could potentially exacerbate whatever issues they may be facing. Deciding to invest in AI rather than proven, time-tested methods of improving student wellbeing, like person-to-person therapy, suggests that the College administration prioritizes tech investment. Not its students.
Evergreen is designed to do exactly what many experts warn against, offering a potentially parasocial experience to vulnerable users. Students vulnerable to mental health struggles make up a large percentage of the student body. In Dartmouth’s 2024 Health Survey, two-thirds of respondents claimed to have felt depressed or helpless at least two days of the prior two weeks. Experts, including those at the American Psychological Association, have warned that the use of AI chatbots at these vulnerable points puts young people at significant risk.
Dartmouth wants to be at the forefront of AI development, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of student wellness. The success of our programs should not be measured by the number of words used to train an AI, but by low wait times and genuine human interaction.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
