I’ve recently been hearing clinicians voice concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) taking over therapy. Admittedly, I’ve had those same concerns myself from time to time. It makes sense. We are constantly bombarded with technological advancements that often seem like science fiction. It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny the impact that technology is having on the mental health field. And the technology seems to be getting more human-like every day.
At the most recent national conference for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, there were multiple presentations about the intersection of technology and therapy. At one particular presentation, a number of emerging artificial intelligence applications were discussed. Some of the applications were promoted as potential replacements for therapists.
Therapists often fear manualized treatments in psychotherapy. If the therapy process is boiled down to a script, the fear goes, the actual therapist becomes interchangeable with anyone else following the same script. Taken to its logical end, if therapy is just a set of manualized techniques, we could easily be replaced by robots.