At ShowCAIS 2025 symposium, Trojans demonstrate the advantages of AI for societal betterment

For many, TikTok serves as a social platform to discover the newest dance moves, trendy eateries, and popular comedic sketches.

However, for Charles “Duke” Bickham, a PhD student from USC Viterbi School of Engineering, artificial intelligence has redefined the application as an essential instrument for gaining insights into public perceptions on pivotal health matters.

On Friday, Bickham presented in a packed lecture room at the USC Caruso Catholic Center, explaining how he utilized AI to analyze tagged content to illustrate the depiction of eating disorders on the platform — just one of the numerous ways AI can aid researchers.

Bickham’s exposition, titled “EDTok: A Dataset for Eating Disorder Content on TikTok,” formed part of the USC Center for AI in Society’s ShowCAIS 2025, a symposium focusing on the contributions of USC students and faculty leveraging AI for societal benefit.

“[The data] not only empowers researchers to probe possible inquiries and identify research deficiencies, but this dataset can enhance our understanding of how TikTok influences and potentially aggravates eating disorders,” Bickham remarked.

His project was among 18 presentations from speakers representing eight schools at USC. Apart from USC Viterbi, the institutions highlighted during the Friday gathering included the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, the USC Marshall School of Business, the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Rossier School of Education.

The event’s purpose is twofold: to emphasize the vital initiatives at USC that employ AI for societal improvement, and to nurture a community devoted to AI research for social good across the university, as stated by Eric Rice, co-founding director of the Center for AI in Society and associate dean for research and a professor at USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.

“AI is frequently perceived as something similar to magic, rather than a practical instrument that can assist in comprehending and tackling significant social dilemmas such as homelessness, suicide prevention, and illegal wildlife trafficking,” Rice articulated during the event.

ShowCAIS 2025: AI approaches for positive impact

The initial series of exposés concentrated on AI strategies addressing homelessness, including a presentation demonstrating how AI can be harnessed to gauge the effectiveness of street outreach efforts.

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efforts for services aimed at the homeless, alongside a presentation on the You Count Data Hub, which is California’s initial comprehensive dashboard regarding youth homelessness.

Michàlle Mor Barak, the Dean’s Endowed Professor in Social Work and Business at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and USC Marshall, provided the keynote address for the daylong event, focusing on community crisis management.

“We must leverage the capabilities of AI to tackle intricate social challenges,” Mor Barak stated. “However, it is equally important that we establish social frameworks that will help harness that capability for societal benefit.”

The afternoon segment examined AI’s ecological influence, particularly its application in illicit wildlife trafficking. During his talk titled “Illegal Scales & TikTok Tales: Topic Analysis of Pangolin Content on TikTok,” Frederick “Tony” Fernandes, a junior in computer science at USC Viterbi, illustrated how he utilized AI to analyze the dissemination of pangolin-related material on TikTok.

“Most individuals are not even properly acquainted with pangolins beyond the conservation realm, which is quite unfortunate and alarming, given that pangolins are the most trafficked mammals across the globe,” Fernandes shared.

Pangolins represent around 20% of all illegal wildlife trafficking, as per Fernandes, with approximately 120 million tons of pangolin products trafficked in the past five years.

“We need to grasp global pangolin perspectives to comprehend how individuals respond to and perceive them,” Fernandes emphasized. “We opted to focus on social media because it serves as the contemporary global platform for dialogue, which will assist in informing conservation efforts.”

AI in physical and mental wellness at ShowCAIS 2025

The lengthiest session of the day — divided into two segments — concentrated on the application of AI in healthcare. Bickham’s discussion regarding eating disorders on TikTok initiated Part 1 of this session. Part 2 commenced later that afternoon after the AI for the Environment segment, featuring presentations focused on AI’s role in suicide prevention and acquiring cancer treatments.

In the first presentation, “Identifying Intervention Opportunities for Suicide Prevention with LLM Assistants in Social Work,” USC Viterbi doctoral candidate Jaspreet Ranjit delved into leveraging AI to support social workers who manually review the National Violent Death Reporting System, supplementing it with summaries for enhanced data collection.

“This task is highly challenging,” Ranjit remarked. “The data includes very explicit and graphic details, and it’s not unusual for an abstractor to feel fatigued, which can lead to inconsistencies in annotation and human error discrepancies.”

After Ranjit’s presentation, Rodrigo Aguilar Barrios — another doctoral student at USC Viterbi — showcased his project, “Detecting Distress to Improve Cancer Patient Care.” Aguilar Barrios discussed how prevalent distress is among cancer patients and how it profoundly impacts their recovery and survivability. Healthcare providers currently conduct distress screenings, yet the timing of these assessments varies. The research highlighted the utilization of biometric data and machine learning to minimize intervals of unreported distress in cancer patients.

“Metrics like respiration rate, heart rate, and heart rate variability are achievable through basic smartwatches,” Aguilar Barrios noted. “Thus, our objective is to enhance care for cancer patients by equipping oncologists with early indicators of distress levels.”

For Phil Nelson, an engineering director at Google attending the Friday symposium, Aguilar Barrios’ insights were among many that showcased the enormous possibilities of AI technology at present.

“The advancements in recent years are truly remarkable,” Nelson stated. “This is an extraordinary time … there are so many remarkable applications across accessibility, education, climate action, public health, conservation, mental well-being, and countless other areas we’re observing here.”