Kaiser mental health professionals strike in Northern California over AI concerns
ABC News
About 2,400 Kaiser Permanente mental health workers are striking in Northern California over fears the company will replace therapists with artificial intelligence
OAKLAND, Calif. -- About 2,400 Kaiser Permanente mental health professionals were striking Wednesday in Northern California over concerns that the health care giant is replacing therapists with artificial intelligence.
Kaiser says the union claim is false and AI will not replace human assessment or make care decisions for patients. Facilities are open, the company said. The two sides have been negotiating a new contract since last summer.
The mental health professionals were joined in their one-day strike by more than 23,000 Kaiser nurses. The therapists, who include social workers and psychologists, provide mental health and addiction medicine treatment for an estimated 4.6 million patients in the San Francisco Bay Area, central valley and Sacramento regions.
Oakland-based Kaiser does not currently use AI for therapy, but the National Union of Healthcare Workers fears the technology will become good enough to make it an attractive option for the company.
Dr. Emma Olsen, a psychiatrist at Kaiser in Vallejo and a union steward, said the union is also pushing back on management demands to curb time spent on patient notes or answering patient messages.
Conductor Juanjo Mena, former principal conductor of the Cincinnati May Festival, says he will retire this year because of Alzheimer’s disease
As the U.S. flu season winds down, health officials say the flu vaccine didn’t work very well
Thousands of snow geese touch down at a Pennsylvania reservoir each spring, turning sunrise into a loud, swirling liftoff that draws big crowds
Cambodia has drafted its first law to crack down on online scam centers that fuel fraud and forced labor
The United States is getting slammed by a stretch of weather extremes, from flooding rain to record heat and late-season snow
Newly revealed incendiary messages in which a Live Nation employee mocks customers as “so stupid” and says the company is “robbing them blind, baby” are gaining public attention during an ongoing antitrust trial
Pro-Iranian hackers are targeting sites in the Middle East and starting to stretch into the United States during the war
After about a month of hearing from addiction experts, therapists, platform engineers and executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, a jury will listen to closing arguments before heading to the deliberation room to decide whether social media companies sh...
Rural school districts say the Trump administration’s visa changes are jeopardizing a key source of teachers
Cuba is grappling with a fast-growing wave of synthetic drug use that is hitting young people hard
An old NASA science satellite is no more
Stryker, a U.S. medical equipment company, says a cyberattack has disrupted its global networks
Virginia senators are pushing to curtail a 5.3% tax break for data centers