Just-In-Time-Training (JITT) / Noni Help
Just-In-Time Training (JITT): Limited and Careful AI to Empower Human Connection and Support
On 7 Cups, our goal is to provide the tools and and the space for people to support each other through their suffering. We help people through active listening, group support, therapy, growth paths, mindfulness, forum posts and so much more. Over the last 10 years, we have learned so much and made so much progress toward this mission. Currently, we provide 11 interventions to help people better cope with and overcome mental health challenges. The power of scaled up support with the help of technology, on a global scale, has been clearly demonstrated by our compassionate community which continues to evolve.
We want to decrease human suffering for free or at little cost. We believe in mental health for all. Anyone that needs help should be able to receive it regardless of language, location, or financial status.
Active listening is the core foundation of our mental health for all vision. It is a set of principles that turns communication into honest and empathic conversation paving the way for support in our daily lives. This leads to human connection on a new level, one that supports healing and wellbeing.
When we provide this support, however, it is sometimes easy to get stuck. For example, a member says something that is difficult to respond to, and you want to respond in a caring way, but you are just not sure what to say. The member also knows you care for them and want to help them. When this happens, we can freeze or maybe we say something that isn’t super helpful. It can take the conversation in a direction that is less healing.
Another important thing to know about the skill of listening is that it is normally distributed. There are some people that are excellent listeners, most people are average listeners, and then some people that struggle to be good listeners. The vast majority of listeners want to be good listeners. If a person signs up on this platform and goes through the work of training, as a volunteer, they are clearly here to be the best listener they can be. But given the distribution, having varied tools can only help.
With the rise of AI over the last decade, we began to think more about the role of this technology in facilitating human connection, healing, and growth. Noni, our AI chatbot launched in 2014, was trained and informed by our community and maintained our values. By 2017, Noni was able to greet users, participate in a group discussion while uniting group members, as well as contribute with positive humor. And, more recently, Noni just went through another series of iterations.
With the latest wave of AI models, we began probing a question that could update what our current support system looked like. What if the latest technology could help everyone wanting to train to be a better listener? We know that anyone who volunteers to listen and trains with us is already very dedicated. This motivation is usually followed by a long pathway of training at the 7 Cups Academy, but what support could we give these active listeners to start their journey right away? Listening is a skill that we can improve on continuously, and so learning something new every day stands as ground for ongoing practice.
There is a sort of training called “Just-In-Time Training” (JITT). This is training that provides the person with the exact information they need at exactly the right moment. Contrast this with taking a course and then remembering and applying what you learned in that course 2 or 3 months later. Both types of training are needed to help people grow professionally.
In the near future, new listeners that want help getting unstuck with just-in-time training, will have the option of clicking a “Noni help” button that says “suggest a response.” AI will then draft a response to the member’s message and drop it in the listener’s message composition area. The listener can then edit the response and hit send when ready.
AI can help us do a better job of decreasing suffering for people that are in pain by empowering human connections based on the core principles of active listening for support. And better yet, this application of AI can be an ethical demonstration of a key debate running through everyone’s mind: Can Humans and AI work together? Collaboration helps everyone move forward together, and with the 7 Cups model in mind, we aim to set an ethical example on how to use AI to productively scale up emotional support.
What Led Us To Need Just-In-Time Training?
Up to this point, our focus has been on foundational training methodologies and tools, which we have developed in the Academy.
We have now trained 500,000 listeners. Collectively, those listeners, and some members, have completed 932,544 courses, and we have helped millions of people. That is a remarkable amount of training! We are almost at 1 million courses completed and the best part is that all of this has been done for free. We do dozens of other things as well to increase the quality of listening on the platform. Our community leaders work very hard on this front. We have come very far, but we have a lot of work left to do.
Each week I get PMs about how much a listener has helped a member or a note that people found 7 Cups and we helped them turn their life around. These are my favorite messages to get. They make me proud of the work we do.
I also get messages from people that did not feel helped. They wish we would have done a better job. Mental health is a complex and complicated issue, and while we have made significant strides, I know that we have a long way to go. Every quarter we do better, but there is always room for improvement.
We are now adding these just-in-time training tools as a way to better equip our listeners and to help integrate learning from courses into real-time conversational support.
The Problem is the Path
At 7 Cups, we believe that the problem is the path - facing challenges helps us find solutions that enable us to stay on the right path.
As we conceptualized this tool, we had to ask ourselves the following questions to ensure what we are doing is as helpful as possible to different groups of people.
Should we use AI to provide just-in-time training to help listeners?
Should members be able to access listeners that are receiving just-in-time AI training support?
Should members have the option of chatting with listeners where they know that the listener cannot and is unable to use just-in-time AI supported listening?
The answer to all of the above is “Yes.” People can choose to engage in AI training and support or choose not to. It is entirely up to them.
Towards Better Active Listening (Humans + AI)
Just-In-Time-Training will be available to all new listeners and some leaders to help with testing. When a member connects with a listener, the member will be notified that the new listener has JITT as an option in a pinned message at the top of the chat.
When a new listener utilizing JITT clicks on the lightbulb icon/button, the AI creates the response through querying something called a large language model. You can think of this as a program that has ingested most of the human text on the Internet. They then convert all of those words and sentences into numbers and then use formulas to predict the right string of words that offers a strong response to the member message. We have informed the formulas with what it means to be an effective active listener, so that the suggestions are fully compliant to 7 Cups protocols as well as conduct policies.
We will very likely limit the use of this tool after a certain amount of time, because we see it as a tool to help us strengthen our active listening and empathy muscles. We do not want to become overly dependent on it. We do not yet know what the optimal amount of time is for people to access it. Our initial plan is to roll it out with new listeners, learn, and then expand to more listeners if it makes sense.
Also, listeners cannot copy and paste the response. We have disabled this capability and they are prompted to use it for inspiration, but to make sure they send the message in their own words, because human to human connections is key.
Leaders are also helping us test JITT so we can learn more quickly. If you are a listener that has been on the platform and would also like to help us test JITT, then please sign up here. If you are a member, chatting with an older listener or leader, and you want to see if they have JITT turned on, then look at the pinned messages at the top of the chat to verify.
There is lots for us to learn over the next several weeks.. I’ll keep you all posted.
Community Collaboration and Benefits
It is important to note that this just-in-time training when stuck feature will need tweaking. That is why we are implementing this in a very careful way. Listeners are primary and human to human connection is central. If a listener is stuck and clicks that “suggest a response” button, but is not happy with the message, then they are free to ignore, delete or revise it. While our admin team, and professional experts, have been working hard to train the just-in-time training to provide the best suggestions, we will be collaborating with the community and using all feedback to continue to tweak our JITT feature.
We have been thinking about AI and mental health since 2014. That is when we introduced Noni. I believe that humans + AI will enable us to decrease suffering. AI will only reach its full potential when it is implemented in a way that helps humans reach their full potential. And, I believe that members and listeners should have the ability to choose to interact with AI as much as they like - a lot, or little, or not at all (just like what we do with Noni now). Both of these can be true. They are not mutually exclusive.
We have always said that we use technology to facilitate human connection, healing and growth. Technology - like a website or app - is a medium much like a film or book. You can use the medium of film or text for good or bad. The same is true for technology and is true of the technology that we call AI. On 7 Cups, technology is a facilitator of human connection and is never a replacement. Listeners are and will always be primary (see this post from 2016).
7 Cups is a special place for a myriad of reasons. We are a community of the best people on the planet. The people with the biggest hearts that go the extra mile to help one another. Many of us are old souls. We’ve been through some ups and downs and we are real about how life unfolds. We don’t pretend to have it all figured out. We know healing is a process.
The Future of Active Listening is the Best Future of AI
As a reminder, AI or other advances in technology will not replace any of our systems but will help in our efficiency. As technology evolves, we continue to invent tools that make our lives better - our growth paths are an example. Now, we have hundreds of growth paths filtered with topics, but how can a listener recommend an activity, prompt or tool for a unique person as a means of support? It would be a great next step to have ways to personalize our wellness journey - and AI will do just that. It is a paintbrush that respects unique human contexts, and as we embark on this path, we will find that it helps turn our needs into a reality.
Please share ideas, thoughts, reflections, and concerns below. I’ll do my best to answer them. Let’s also keep adding here or in some other dedicated section of the forum so we can figure these things out together.
Thank you!
To sign up to test JITT you can fill this form
