AI Entrepreneurship in Mental Health

Sofia University’s Winter 2025 AI Workshop

AI Chatbots, Entrepreneurship, and Mental Health Support Chatbots

Saturday, January 25, 2025, from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM.

This engaging event explored how artificial intelligence chatbots can revolutionize the service economy. Offering a hands-on opportunity to work with a chatbot, participants learned about the entrepreneurial and egalitarian nature of AI chatbots and the service industry. In particular, the seminar focused on how chatbots can be used to support therapeutic practices in mental health counseling. Sofia’s own PhD student Yujia Zhu, explained how she built FASSLING, an emotional and coaching support chatbot: “FASSLING is more than just a chatbot; it’s a lifeline that offers comfort and guidance during moments of distress.” https://fassling.ai/ Interactive group sessions followed, where participants learned to use the FASSLING chatbot. Then a senior member of the Computer Science faculty gave a presentation on just how easy it is to create or customize a chatbot for anyone in the service industry.  

Learning Outcomes:

·       Understanding how chatbots work within different service industries and how easily they can be built and customized.

·       Understanding how an AI chatbot can be used to support mental health practice

·       Gain experience actually working hands-on with a mental health chatbot.

These outcomes were met through:

·       A lecture on the role of AI chatbots in the service industry, and the entrepreneurial approach to their development.

·       A brief lecture about the development the Fassling.ai chatbot

·       An interactive session experimenting with the FASSLING chatbot through a professor guided group activity.

·       A presentation by Sofia’s professors in the Master of Counseling Psychology program, evaluating the effectiveness of this chatbot

·       A detailed presentation on how chatbot technology is developed