Rise of AI therapists

Many therapists worry that speaking to a bot, while helpful in answering certain direct questions or providing answers and guidance, will not effectively offer the human-level of support that someone dealing with a mental illness or who finds themself in mental distress may require. Licensed marriage and family therapist Emma McAdam addressed this paradox on her YouTube channel, "Therapy in a Nutshell." “ChatGPT is really good at answering topic-based questions. It’s good at providing information about typical treatment options,” she said in her “Therapist vs. Artificial Intelligence” episode. “But it can never provide a supportive relationship and the motivational supportive structure of actual therapy with a real person.”

Some mental health apps, such as Koko, tested how users might react to AI-generated responses within the platform. As part of an experiment to test ChatGPT-3, Koko users were given responses written by a bot, but approved by a human. The trial found that most answers generated with help from GPT-3 had better ratings. However, some people felt that, as McAdam mentioned above, the answers were helpful but somehow lacked the “support” one might get from a real person. Koko co-founder Robert Morris spoke to Fast Company about the trial: “When I get [these responses], it’s like, ‘Yeah, that feels right.’ But I don’t feel supported.”

Bias is also a concern for many experts in the tech and psychological fields. In March, the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) warned that using AI for intimate, interpersonal needs such as therapy “reproduces systems of oppression and endangers our information ecosystem” due to its tendency to generate answers based on biased or discriminatory data. The threat of bias could be impactful, especially if certain populations turn to the chat bots for therapy more frequently. “I think marginalized communities, including rural populations, are more likely to be the ones with barriers to access, so might also be more likely to turn to ChatGPT for their needs, if they have access to technology in the first place,” St. Louis's Washington University psychiatrist Jessica Gold told Vice's tech platform, Motherboard.