An Act regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in providing mental health services.

• Authority: Massachusetts
• Parent authority: State governments
• Jurisdiction: United States
• Collections: U.S. state and local documents
• Most recent activity: Proposed
• Most recent activity date: 2023-06-29

Risk subdomain coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the risk subdomain are explicitly described.

• Overreliance and unsafe use
• Loss of human agency and autonomy
• Governance failure
• Lack of capability or robustness

Minimal coverage — Brief mention but no specific mitigations, recommendations or governance measures relating to the risk subdomain are described.

• Compromise of privacy
• Lack of transparency or interpretability

All other risk subdomains had no coverage in this document.

Risk Coverage Summary

The document has minimal to good coverage of approximately 5-6 subdomains, with primary focus on human-computer interaction risks (5.1, 5.2), AI system safety and robustness (7.3), governance structures (6.5), and privacy considerations (2.1). Coverage is concentrated in patient safety, informed consent, and professional oversight domains.

Sector coverage

Good coverage — Comprehensive governance measures or mitigations with clear procedures relating to the sector are explicitly described.

• Health Care & Social Assistance

All other sectors had no coverage in this document.

Sectors Summary

This document exclusively governs the Health Care and Social Assistance sector, specifically regulating the use of AI in mental health services provided by licensed mental health professionals. No other sectors are mentioned or governed.

Legislative Status

Hard Law

Legislative Status Summary

This is a binding legal statute enacted by the Massachusetts General Laws with mandatory requirements, licensing board approval mechanisms, and explicit disciplinary penalties for violations.

Actors

Proposer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The document is a legislative act amending Chapter 123 of the General Laws, indicating it was proposed and enacted by the Massachusetts state legislature.

Target

• Entity Types: AI_Developer, AI_Deployer
• Summary: The act explicitly targets licensed mental health professionals who provide or wish to provide AI-assisted mental health services, requiring them to obtain approval, inform patients, and obtain consent.

Enforcer

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor
• Summary: The document explicitly designates professional licensing boards as the enforcement authority with power to approve AI use and impose disciplinary action for violations.

Monitor

• Entity Types: AI_Governance_Actor, AI_Deployer
• Summary: The act requires continuous monitoring by licensed mental health professionals and implies oversight by licensing boards through their approval and disciplinary functions.

AI Lifecycle Stages

Lifecycle stages covered by the documents, as defined in the OECD Framework for the Classification of AI Systems

• Plan and Design
• Verify and Validate
• Deploy
• Operate and Monitor

AI Lifecycle Summary

The document primarily focuses on the Deploy and Operate and Monitor stages of the AI lifecycle, with requirements for licensing board approval before deployment and continuous monitoring during operation. There is implicit coverage of Verify and Validate through the approval process and safety requirements.

Technical Scope

Terms relating to technical scope that are mentioned or implicitly referenced in the document

• AI Systems
• Task-specific AI

Technical Scope Summary

The document explicitly mentions AI and AI systems in the context of mental health services. It provides a broad definition of AI including natural language processing, training language models, reinforcement learning from human feedback, and machine learning systems. There is no mention of frontier AI, general purpose AI, foundation models, generative AI, predictive AI, open-weight models, or compute thresholds.