PANNY 2026 Spring Seminar (Webinar) - Psychology and Artificial Intelligence: Hallucinations, Cognitive Offloading and Data Mining: Are We Prepared?

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 from 9:00 am - 11:00 am

Presented by Dr. Shara Sand, Psy.D.

Where: Online via Zoom (After registering, you will receive a Zoom link for the conference.)

Program Overview

All mental health professionals, including graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, are welcome.

This 2 hour presentation will provide an overview of how LLM’s, large language models, known as GAI (generative AI platforms eg. ChatGPT, Claude) functions versus NGAI (non-generative AI platforms, eg. Google, Siri). The research on the effect/utility of GAI in educational and clinical settings will be reviewed, positive and negative. Legal cases, settled and in current dispute, regarding the purported safety of GAI platforms will be highlighted and the ways in which these platforms can be hacked to cause harm will be examined.

About Dr. Shara Sand, Psy.D.

Shara Sand, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist in New York State and received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical Psychology/AIDS at St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center, NYC (currently Mt. Sinai Morningside & West). Dr. Sand’s interests in psychology, music, gender/sexuality and social justice are reflected in her professional and clinical work, and she has received several awards in recognition for her 30+ years work with the LGBTQ+ community. They are a clinician, teacher, writer, speaker who has published 25+ papers and made 100+ presentations on a wide range of topics at the local and national level. Dr. Sand maintains a private practice specializing in sexual/gender identity issues, creative/performing artists, neurodivergent and multilingual populations. Dr. Sand holds a B.Mus. & M.A. in trombone performance and was a free-lance musician in a former life during the last millennium. She identities as female, is perceived as she/they/he, and is comfortable with all.

The course learning objectives are:

1. Participants will be able to explain 3 ways in which LLMs (large language models), or Generative AI (GAI), GPT, Claude, Anthropic, etc., are used in ways that are different from non-generative AI (Google, Siri, etc.). These include identifying how algorithms for AI are constructed, how AI “hallucinations occur and how machine programming is different from human programming.
2. Participants will be able to demonstrate knowledge of how psychology is used in the development of AI algorithms, specifically 2 primary constructs, cognitive and memory models.
3. Participants will be able to verbalize 3 positive and 3 negative contributions that AI can make to the educational and clinical aspects of psychology.
4. Participants will be able to cite 3 studies in which data/legal constraints challenge the “benefits only” model proposed by AI corporations.

Two CE contact hours will be provided for NYS psychologists only. All other mental health providers are still welcome to register to view the presentation, but will not be offered CE credits.

PANNY has partnered with the National Register of Health Service Psychologists to offer continuing education contact hours (NYSED) for this course. The National Register of Health Service Psychologists is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PST-0010.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions: Dana Lau at danalau08@gmail.com or PANNY President Tania Khan at taniakhan.phd@gmail.com.