I know it’s not even close there yet. It can tell you to kill yourself or to kill a president. But what about when I finish school in like 7 years? Who would pay for a therapist or a psychologist when you can ask for help a floating head on your computer?
You might think this is a stupid and irrational question. “There is no way AI will do psychology well, ever.” But I think in today’s day and age it’s pretty fair to ask when you are deciding about your future.
You are putting WAY too much faith in the ability of programmers. Real AI that can do the job of a therapist is decades away, at least - and then there’s the approval process, which will take years all by itself. Don’t underestimate that. AI therapy is uncharted territory, and the approval process will be lengthy, detailed, and incredibly strict.
Lastly, there’s public acceptance. Even if AI turns out to have measurably better outcomes, if people aren’t comfortable with it, statistics won’t matter. People aren’t rational. I don’t care how “good” Alexa is, or how much evidence you show me - I will never accept that a piece of software can understand what it’s like to grow up as a person. I want to talk about my issues with a flawed, fallible human, not a box plugged into the wall.
You ask a valid question, just much earlier than necessary. I’d be surprised if AI was a viable alternative by the time you retire.
There are already digital therapeutic platforms approved for mental health. Orexo deprexis is one such program. The fact is that the vast majority of people who need therapy aren’t getting it now. These ai therapy models will provide services to those people. I’m willing to bet that in a decade, the majority of therapy will be done by AI, with human therapists focused on the most severe behavioral health conditions.
It’s definitely possible, but such an AI would probably be good enough to take over every other field too. So it’s not like you can avoid it by choosing something else anyway.
And the disruption would be large enough that governments will have to react in some way.
At the end of the day AI (no just the LLM we call AI now) are really good at doing boring machine work. These tasks are repetitive, simple and routine. This includes all the LLM which can summarize boring text and generate more boring text. It can’t generate anything new but just output and rearrange.
What there will be always need for are human work. This includes creativity, emotions and human interaction. A machine can’t replace that at all. Psychology and therapy are all emotions and human interactions so it might be the most safe career choice. Same with something like haircutting or other career that involve human wisdom and personal skills.
Boring jobs like sending and receiving emails might be replaced. The reason businesses are so scared is that the majority of people in an office just do that
They already do have AI therapy assistants. CBT type therapy is particularly easy to turn into an app. There are half a dozen in the Google Play store now. They’re a nice reminder at times, but no substitute for human conversation.
Once we do have AIs capable of conversation indistinguishable from real human, then therapy is not the only job that will be disrupted. Therapy will be no more or less safe a career path than so many other things.
Second, humans will still need to program, train, and monitor the therapy AIs. The obvious candidates to fill the role at first are experienced therapists with a bit of tech savvy. Until they optimize to the point where the job can be done by warm bodies paid minimum wage, probably “contractors” so liability can be compartmentalized. Then we’re back to the point above where everyone in any career is fucked anyway, might as well do what you’re good at and what you enjoy for a decade or two.
Here’s a case study for you: An eating disorder hotline got rid of the humans in favor of an AI chatbot. Lasted less than a week before it was giving horrible advice.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/eating-disorder-hotline-union-ai-chatbot-harm
Psychology will be controlled by humans, probably forever.
