Back in January, after the Sentinel editorial board met with several community members on the front lines of suicide prevention, we pitched what we thought was a revolutionary idea – using technology to identify people at risk for suicidal ideation.

Specifically, we suggested executives at Facebook consider using the high incidence of suicide in Mesa County as a springboard to develop a strategy to scan users’ wall posts for hints that suggest a risk of self-harm.

Turns out Facebook was a step ahead of us. In March, the social media giant deployed “artificial intelligence” (or AI) – a pattern-recognition algorithm – to detect users who might be in crisis and trigger reporting options for intervention.

Read more at The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.