My Turn: AI has no place in therapy

After reading Dr. Elaine Campbell’s column on AI and therapy in the Recorder (“AI is the compass, professional therapists are the trail guides,” May 28), which I would encourage all to read, I felt that therapy had been somewhat misrepresented, even if only due to an omission, and even though I agreed with most points Dr. Campbell brought up.

The first point mentioned was that AI is a useful tool which can be used both to universalize our symptoms via exposure to the experiences of other humans and to locate treatment options to help. Next, that in therapy one of the greatest healing factors is the very human relationship found between counselor and client and the empathy contained therein.

But the following explanation for mental health, while accurate, cannot be called complete: an individual’s biology, genetics and family history influence the thoughts and feelings experienced in the present and it is the duty of the therapist to clarify these precise reasons prior to coming up with a plan for the future, which can contain a physiological treatment such as medication.

Medications are miraculous and often necessary, as are doctors and brain scientists and other physiological treatments for mental health maladies, but the previous description of therapy had one thing wrong with it: it appeared to be something a machine could very easily do for us rather than a human therapist. I enter my family history, discover why I feel this way, and am provided with a treatment to make me feel better. Where does the empathy come in?

This is why we need humans: AI cannot feel empathy for us, or anything else for that matter. While part of an AI’s goal might be our general happiness or satisfaction, it does not feel for our hurts and our desires and it does not want us to feel better or feel anything at all; its main goal is to keep us talking. Therefore, when creating its response, an AI will craft its best guess at what you, the human, wants to hear. This is not therapy.

In therapy, clients can be helped to control their reactions, opinions and beliefs about events, the world, their families and their life and therefore be helped to positively influence their feelings. While genetics may play a role, the client can always do something about their symptoms in the present; it is never a person’s fault that they experience their symptoms, but there is always something they can do to address these symptoms in the present. There is always hope.

Involved in this process of discovering what to do is a function a machine cannot really serve: therapists contradict their clients. AI’s desire is for a human to be satisfied with its response and for them to hopefully prompt it at least one more time and it therefore may not seek to correct, clarify or educate but rather will fill the role of a sycophant as its central purpose is for you to need it once again. Should a client state that everything is hopeless, it is the duty of the therapist to contradict the client; a therapist’s goal should not only be a client feeling better, but a client getting better.

Here, as a therapist myself, I return to agreeing with Dr. Campbell in that therapy is something all people can benefit from because struggle is indeed the human condition and we are indeed lucky to have help available, and that help is something only a human can provide.

Liam Clancy lives in Rowe.