In the previous two articles on AI-based therapy, I’ve detailed why AI therapists are poised to transform the mental health care industry and why many clients will prefer AI therapists over human ones. Here, we’ll look at how human therapists can remain indispensable as cheap, AI-based therapy becomes widely available.
AI
An AI therapist can’t really do therapy. Many clients will choose it anyway.
It just isn’t the same, I hear over and over, from psychotherapists shrugging away concern over artificial intelligence. An AI therapist can’t really empathize. It can’t truly understand. It can’t build a therapeutic relationship with depth and connectedness the way a human therapist can.
As a therapist myself, I agree with all of these statements. An AI therapist is not equivalent to a human therapist. Like many therapists, I tend to focus on the ways that AI falls short.
But for clients, in many ways, an AI therapist is better than a human one.
What artificial intelligence can do for your therapy practice right now
As with any new technology, artificial intelligence is drawing concern and skepticism from many therapists. It’s also drawing great enthusiasm from therapists who tend to be early adopters of new technologies. For all the promise that AI holds for future implementation, it’s reasonable to ask: What can artificial intelligence do for my therapy practice right now? Here, we look at three different places where AI can have an immediate impact on your therapy work.