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. Using the triage system, the counselors can serve 93% of at-risk texters in under five minutes.
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.
His Contact Info
His Recommended Resources
Ray Dalio’s Principles
Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s Storytelling with Data