Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are creating new opportunities for personalizing technology-based health interventions to adolescents. This article provides a computer science perspective on how emerging AI technologies-intelligent learning environments, interactive narrative generation, user modeling, and adaptive coaching-can be utilized to model adolescent learning and engagement and deliver personalized support in adaptive health technologies. Many of these technologies have emerged from human-centered applications of AI in education, training, and entertainment. However, their application to improving healthcare, to date, has been comparatively limited. We illustrate the opportunities provided by AI-driven adaptive technologies for adolescent preventive healthcare by describing a vision of how future adolescent preventive health interventions might be delivered both inside and outside of the clinic. Key challenges posed by AI-driven health technologies are also presented, including issues of privacy, ethics, encoded bias, and integration into clinical workflows and adolescent lives. Examples of empirical findings about the effectiveness of AI technologies for user modeling and adaptive coaching are presented, which underscore their promise for application toward adolescent health. The article concludes with a brief discussion of future research directions for the field, which is well positioned to leverage AI to improve adolescent health and well-being.
Keywords: Adaptive learning technologies; Adolescents; Artificial intelligence; Health information technology; Interactive narrative generation; Prevention; User modeling.
Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.