MDMA |
2,600 |
Ketamine |
1,800 |
Cocaine unspecified |
1,700 |
Cannabis unspecified |
1,300 |
Alcohol unspecified |
800 |
Lysergide( LSD) |
700 |
Bromodimethoxyphenethyl... |
600 |
Heroin illicit |
500 |
Cocaine Freebase( crack) |
500 |
Benzodiazepines unspecified |
400 |
Amphetamines unspecified |
400 |
Pregabalin |
400 |
Methamphetamine |
400 |
Alprazolam |
300 |
Psilocybin |
300 |
Codeine unspecified |
300 |
Diazepam |
300 |
GHB / GBL |
200 |
Anti-depressants |
200 |
Synthetic Cannabis |
200 |
Nicotine |
100 |
Dextromethorphans |
100 |
Nitrous oxide |
100 |
Dimethyltriptamine |
100 |
Methadone unspecified |
100 |
Methylphenidate |
100 |
Mephedrone |
100 |
Drug Effects & Experiences |
4,800 |
Dosage & safety |
3,380 |
Drug interactions |
2,950 |
Methods of use |
1,470 |
Harm reduction & reducing use |
1,450 |
Drug information & testing |
1,360 |
Physical health risks |
1,330 |
Addiction & dependency |
950 |
Withdrawal & recovery |
740 |
Overdose & emergency treatment |
550 |
Mental health |
380 |
Support & treatment |
360 |
Other / unclassified |
290 |
Policy |
180 |
Vulnerabilities |
80 |
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‘ Having a bot focused on one topic, albeit a sprawling one that changes month by month, improves the guardrails for human safety.’
CREDIBLE SOURCES The reality is that people are increasingly using AI to ask questions about everything, including drugs. Drugbot is our answer to the flaws of other LLMS when discussing drugs – it draws from a specific hand-curated knowledge base from credible sources, each page combed over and hosted separately with permission from their creators. Several LLMs then act simultaneously to connect dots between the question it has been asked and the information it has at its disposal.
Drugbot needs to be continually tweaked according to the needs of those who use it, and one thing is abundantly clear – it will never be finished. Recently the team has been working to improving Drugbot’ s understanding of peptides, orphines and quaalude analogues, all increasingly
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popular compounds with very little credible information available. As another example, we will soon include articles from the last 12 editions of DDN, excluding anything that could opinionate, skew or confuse answers. In addition to knowledge base from a range of harm reduction organisations, reams of data have also been written by Cranstoun and Substancy to fill various gaps and add nuance.
Providing proper human oversight is difficult. Humans are currently sending Drugbot around 100 messages a day, and we can’ t read all of them, but the transcripts we do review are very encouraging. A panel of harm reduction experts rate anonymous conversations according to various criteria, producing quantitative scores and qualitative comments. Alongside feedback from users, this helps us identify future tweaks to add to the queue and track the impact of past developments.
The instances where Drugbot gets it wrong are few and far between. On one occasion Drugbot assumed that, as with other types of drugs, swallowing IPEDs( aka steroids) would be less harmful than injecting them, because it didn’ t understand the risks IPEDS pose to the liver when metabolised via the gut. We instructed the bot to refuse to answer any questions relating
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to IPEDs until it had been provided with more information and thoroughly tested.
REMOVING BARRIERS A key principle of Drugbot is that it isn’ t trying to replace human services or interactions – if anything, quite the opposite. We developed a‘ find a service’ feature, which allows users to enter their location and quickly access a range of local support options. The has been triggered 735 times since August, funnelling people from asking questions online to getting realworld help when they need it, reducing barriers and improving uptake to services.
We’ re continually building new features to make Drugbot more useful and more impactful – one example is an upcoming a drug alert system that uses WEDINOS data to provide timely and geographically relevant test results to users on the compounds they’ re asking about. For example, if someone from Redcar submitted a sample to WEDINOS presumed to be 3-MMC, but tested as 4-CMC, other people in Middlesbrough will be alerted when they ask Drugbot about 3-MMC.
AI is here to stay, and is incredibly useful when used responsibly. Professionals from a range of backgrounds repeatedly tell us how Drugbot is helping inform their practice – doctors, domestic abuse
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workers, youth workers, social workers, commissioners, drug workers and more besides.
As drugs become more varied and complex, professionals who don’ t receive regular training on drugs can’ t hope to keep up with emerging trends. If anything, Drugbot really comes into its own as a quick fact-finding reference tool with professionals acting as the filter, deciding what to include in the face-to-face discussion.
Drugbot is currently UK-only and has thus far been developed to answer questions in a style that reflects UK-specific contexts. The eagle-eyed among you will notice it can translate into ten languages, and as we look to responsibly expand Drugbot internationally there are exciting times ahead. One day, we hope to cover the Global South, where people who use drugs have little access to harm reduction information or services. By creating tools that are simultaneously useful for peers and professionals, we hope to make a lasting contribution to the field that tangibly reduces harm.
Dr Josh Torrance is innovation officer, Paige Hoe is innovation programme lead, and Mark Tudor is strategic partnerships and delivery excellence at Cranstoun
Dr Ivan Ezquerra-Romano is founder of Substancy
Drugbot is free to use and available to over-18s only. https:// cranstoun. org / help-andadvice / harm-reduction / drugbot
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