Apply Now: $5 Million to Test If AI Chatbots Fail Users in Crisis
By Wayan Vota on September 6, 2026
The WHO Mental Health Atlas 2024 counts a median of 1.1 to 2.4 specialized mental health workers per 100,000 people in low-income and lower-middle-income countries. High-income countries report 67.2, and spend US$65.89 per person against under a dollar.
People in that gap type their problems into chatbots. In a June 2025 study of roughly 4.5 million Claude.ai conversations, Miles McCain and thirteen co-authors at Anthropic found 2.9% were emotional or personal exchanges. The study covered adults only and gave no breakdown by country or language.
That omission is the problem.
The benchmarks deciding whether a model answers a distressed user safely are written in English against North American and European clinical practice. Researchers led by Adrián Arnaiz-Rodríguez at ELLIS Alicante tested leading models against crisis inputs from 12 datasets and found generic and location-inappropriate answers, worst in self-harm scenarios. A helpline number for the wrong country is not a safe response.
$5 Million AI Chatbot Opportunity
Anthropic will award $5 million in individual grants of typically $500,000 to $1.5 million. That funds between three and ten teams to research how AI impacts users’ wellbeing. Grantees also get research API access or credits and occasional technical input from Anthropic staff.
Every funded evaluation must ship as an open-source resource. Anthropic will not veto or embargo findings, and grantees must disclose the funding in all outputs.
Example topics include detecting harmful emotional dependence and measuring whether responses optimize for continued interaction over user interest. The Safeguards team’s guidance lists regional and linguistic variation as a quality criterion, naming slang, coded terms, crisis resources, and cultural norms.
Apply Now: Deadline is 21 September 2026
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Filed Under: Funding
More About: Generative AI, Mental Health, Online Safety, World Health Organization
Written by Wayan Vota
Wayan Vota co-founded ICTworks. He also co-founded Technology Salon, Career Pivot, MERL Tech, ICT4Djobs, ICT4Drinks, JadedAid, Kurante, OLPC News and a few other things. Opinions expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of his employer, any of its entities, or any ICTWorks sponsor.
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