Has anyone used an AI therapist?

[bobcat]

It's hard for me to imagine AI taking on this role successfully, but I wouldn't discount it completely. It's too early to tell. I have no idea what AI will become, but I imagine it succeeding more as an echo chamber that is best suited to reinforcing existing idiosyncrasies. Therapy seems like the exact opposite. But who knows?

I feel the same here. Many people are now using chatbots and different flavors of AI to aid them with different types of problems. However, the minds and behaviors of individuals can be very complex. Ther isn't one, or even a small number of approaches to effective therapy. A therapist may start out with one approach, and determine at some point that it doesn't work well with this patient, and then switch to a different way of dealing with it.

I think honesty is a crucial part of the equation. That trust may hinge on knowing there is a doctor/patient confidentiality. Would a person have that same trust in an AI, hard to say. Maybe some results are reported back to the manufacturer, or perhaps even hacked.

Then there is the human factor. We identify with "like" things (People) because they understand the challenges of being human. They usually know how it feels to be violated, or cheated, or dumped, etc... If not, they could probably imagine it. It's hard to imagine an effective AI therapist for now, but the future is changing rapidly. Ten years ago we probably couldn't have imagined a robot doing surgery, so as you said, who knows.

 

[HermitHogan]

I feel the same here. Many people are now using chatbots and different flavors of AI to aid them with different types of problems. However, the minds and behaviors of individuals can be very complex. Ther isn't one, or even a small number of approaches to effective therapy. A therapist may start out with one approach, and determine at some point that it doesn't work well with this patient, and then switch to a different way of dealing with it.

Typically, insurance only covers five sessions, so they'd better get it right on the first try!

But yeah, if the client is wealthy, they can try various approaches and suck more and more money out of the client.

I think what a therapist does provide is connection; that is, you bond with someone who understands and will listen to you nonjudgmentally — that is, if you find a good therapist. Many are not so good. There's a high rate of inappropriate behaviors reported... it's like one in five or something like that.

The fact is, many people who become therapists are pretty screwed up themselves, and they go into that line of work initially to cure themselves. I studied psychology for a while for that reason. I started work on a Master's degree in counseling psychology about 15 years ago, but after two semesters, the professors determined that I wasn't a good fit for the program. That was good, because I would have wasted a lot of money and not have been successful. I'm not good with people. In fact, I hate people.