AI Interaction Risk
Structured Professional Judgement (AIR SPJ)
Artificial intelligence is changing how people seek advice, form attachments, process grievances, and make decisions. For most users, AI tools are helpful, practical, and even supportive. But in behavioral threat assessment and management, we also need to ask a harder question:
What happens when a person in crisis, grievance, isolation, fixation, or decline begins using AI in ways that reinforce harmful thinking, deepen dependency, or assist planning?
That question is what led the AIR-SPJ Team of Certified Threat Managers, Jameson Ritter, Totti Karpela & Steve Crimando, to begin developing the AIR-SPJ.
Rapid technological change has always reshaped human behavior. AI large language models and companion chatbots represent the latest evolution, introducing new forms of intimacy, validation, and accessibility that may amplify both connection and risk. As Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) has evolved to address emerging digital vectors, no current structured professional judgment (SPJ) tool systematically evaluates how artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLMs), and companion chatbots may amplify risks of targeted violence or self-harm.
There is no doubt that AI will have a major impact on violence risk and threat assessment in the coming decades. We cannot wait for high-quality research, we must start somewhere, building on existing knowledge. Nobody can say that we did not see the risks coming.
The AIR-SPJ (AI Interaction Risk Structured Professional Judgment) is a practitioner-led starting framework designed as a supplement to established SPJ tools used in workplace, campus, and general violence risk contexts. The framework is not yet fully developed or validated; it is offered as an evidence-informed foundation open to community vetting, refinement, and collaborative piloting.
Existing SPJ instruments provide strong foundations but do not operationalize AI-specific factors. We do not have time to wait for perfect data while technology outpaces our assessment frameworks. We offer here a modest starting point: the AIR-SPJ, a dedicated framework to identify, formulate, and manage AI-mediated risks within BTAM workflows. The framework is offered as a starting point for the field to vet, modify, and build upon together.
Technology’s impact on human behavior is relentless, and BTAM practice must keep pace without overstating what is known. The AIR-SPJ is offered as a modest, evidence-informed starting framework for the field to examine, challenge, refine, and test.
Check out these short videos for an introduction to the AIR SPJ and an update on development progress.
If you work in behavioral threat assessment, workplace violence prevention, school safety, campus safety, mental health, AI safety, digital risk, law enforcement, research, or related fields, we would welcome your input.
Feedback from the BTAM community, ATAP members, international threat assessment professionals, AI researchers, clinicians, and technology partners who share an interest in preventing targeted violence and self-harm will be critical to the development of this tool. Please consider joining the authors with your experience and knowledge to contribute to this importaint tool.
Please visit AIRSPJ.com to learn more and register as a contributor. For more information about the AIR SPJ please email the lead developer, Jameson Ritter.