[Opinion Piece] What if Artificial Intelligence Replaces Human Therapists?

To recap some of what I said before, I think we should focus (and the profession should feel less suspicious about) adjunctive uses of AI—treating it as a capable administrative assistant. I think any use of the tech to replace the actual human relationship at the heart of psychotherapy should be viewed with heightened scrutiny. Not because of the guild interests of therapists, but because there is still something that is impossible to technologically replicate about human relationships, even if some of the people interacting with chatbots feel more satisfied by those interactions than by their real-life ones. The solution to that is not necessarily to celebrate the technology that makes them feel that way but to help people improve their capacities for intimacy and relating. That, of course, requires a structural investment in the affordability of mental healthcare, and, at least in the United States, that’s a tall order. So, we might be left with the question of whether chatbot therapy is better than no therapy. Your readers will have to make up their own minds about that.