Datacast Episode 18: NLP at Crisis Text Line with Ankit Gupta

Datacast’s 18th episode is my conversation with Ankit Gupta, a data scientist at Crisis Text Line. Give a listen to learn about his background in Solutions Architect, his graduate work at Carnegie Mellon, and his Natural Language Processing projects at the non-profit tech startup Crisis Text Line.

Ankit Gupta is a data scientist at Crisis Text Line, a New York-based not-for-profit tech startup providing 24/7 free text-based crisis support to individuals. At Crisis Text Line, Ankit developed an AI-driven triage system that detects signals of suicidality within the first few messages sent by texters.

Ankit Gupta is a data scientist at Crisis Text Line, a New York-based not-for-profit tech startup providing 24/7 free text-based crisis support to individuals. At Crisis Text Line, Ankit developed an AI-driven triage system that detects signals of suicidality within the first few messages sent by texters. Using the triage system, the counselors can serve 93% of at-risk texters in under five minutes.

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Show Notes

  • (2:04) Ankit discussed his college experience at the Amity School of Engineering and Tech in which he studied Computer Science and Engineering.

  • (3:34) Ankit talked about his first role out of school as a Senior Solution Integrator role at Ericsson.

  • (5:20) Ankit talked about a unique aspect of his role at Ericsson, which was global collaboration and communication with clients all over the world, including the US, UK, and Nigeria.

  • (7:50) Ankit went over his 2 years at Core Services working as an Oracle Applications Technical Consultant.

  • (9:25) Ankit gave his story about pursuing a Master’s Degree in Information Systems Management at Carnegie Mellon.

  • (10:56) Ankit talked about his Teaching Assistant experience for a couple of Python courses at CMU.

  • (12:13) Ankit talked about this capstone work for his Master’s degree.

  • (13:27) Ankit gave a brief overview about Crisis Text Line.

  • (14:48) Ankit provided the context for his article on LinkedIn called “Triage for Crisis Counseling: How our algorithm prioritizes suicidal texts” that he wrote during his summer internship at Crisis Text Line.

  • (16:40) Ankit discussed a couple of interesting projects he has been involved with since accepting a full-time Data Scientist role at Crisis Text Line in January 2017.

  • (21:19) Ankit talked about his post “Embracing AI to save lives” on Crisis Text Line’s blog, which uses machine learning to identify previously missed imminent risk conversations and reduce false alarms.

  • (28:01) Referring to another piece called “Detecting crisis — An AI solution”, Ankit discussed the impacts of AI at Crisis Text Line.

  • (30:34) Ankit talked about the vision of Crisis Text Line’s CEO, Nancy Lublin.

  • (33:21) Ankit gave his advice on becoming good at data science.

  • (37:37) Ankit went over his participation in Toastmasters New York, an organization that operates worldwide for the purpose of promoting communication and public speaking skills.

  • (40:10) Ankit talked about the data science community in New York City.

  • (42:47 ) Closing segment.

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