Circuit Breaker Labs Tests AI Mental Health Tools With Simulated Users to Catch Psychological Harms Before They Reach Real People

Circuit Breaker Labs, founded by siblings Shirali and Arul Nigam, has deployed AI-driven red-teaming tools to pressure-test conversational AI systems for mental health risks before they cause real-world harm. The startup's approach treats AI safety evaluation like automotive crash testing—creating thousands of simulated "crash test dummies" representing diverse ages, backgrounds, languages, and cultural contexts to expose where mental health chatbots fail.