AI vs Human Connection: Can Artificial Intelligence Replace Therapists?

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and felt like you were talking to a wall?

Yep, me too.

It seems like countless times per day I receive a lukewarm response that might as well have come from a bot.

“Doing well, thanks, you?”

Let’s be honest, though. At 7:38 am, while I’m taking in the trash bins, do I really want to hear how my neighbor is doing? Probably not. Unfortunately, ain’t nobody got time for that.

Lately, there's been an undercurrent of fear about AI taking over the world. With ChatGPT writing code for programmers and even penning essays for our kids ("Write me an essay about the Civil War but don't use big words like 'henceforth'"), it's not hard to imagine a world where human usefulness is phasing out.

I've mentioned before how coaches and mental health professionals may be in that contingent, particularly with the success of telehealth brought on by Covid. Can AI truly replace genuine human connection? This year, Robert Morris, founder of Koko - an online emotional support chat service - wanted to put that to the test. About 4000 of the users that wrote in to the service for support unknowingly received replies from AI rather than a human.

To be fair, Koko is a peer-to-peer service, and the feedback and support provided to users was not understood to be coming from trained mental health professionals. However, users who initially received responses from AI rated the feedback significantly higher than those from humans. Until Koko revealed that they had been played, after which users changed their tune to "That's totally creepy and nope."

One of the first classes required of mental health graduate students is active listening. When actively listening to a client, you pay attention to what is not being said, as much as what is actually spoken. That is, what is someone saying with their body language? Why did they hesitate when talking about that? Coaches and mental health professionals rely on this skill as the backbone of forming relationships and gathering information for treatment planning and goal setting. Can AI be trained to actively listen? If so, what are the cross-cultural implications of that?

Perhaps more importantly, research has demonstrated that the most crucial factor in therapeutic success is the quality of the relationship between the therapist and the client. The chemistry between a coach and a client is also one of the strongest predictors of successful outcomes. If you have ever been in therapy or coaching, you can likely attest that the bond you formed (or didn't form) with your professional was crucial to your process.

This helps me rest at night because although I can imagine a world of AI politicians (if they don't already exist 🥁), or chefs (sorry, Gordon), I don't think our profession is in danger of being replaced anytime soon.

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