The surprising reason AI won't replace your human therapist

Unless you are living under a proverbial rock, you have likely encountered one of the countless think pieces on AI or had AI affect your job (hello all the WGA writers on strike I see and support you!) You also might be currently looking to start therapy and wondering if AI can replace your lovely potential human therapist?

You can likely guess that my answer is no, AI won’t replace human therapists, at least not anytime soon. The reason why might surprise you though…

In its current public form, AI like ChatGPT is basically a predictive language model. That means that it pops out answers to your questions based on the most likely response as predicted by all the data it has acquired reading things on the internet. This makes it great for generating ideas based on your inquiries or brainstorming a new perspective on your prompts but ultimately it’s a super fancy cut and paste conversation with the web. If you try to use it as a therapist, chances are good it will shoot back a few interesting answers to your psychological questions, some of which could be quite profoundly positive or damaging.

Unlike an actual therapist though, AI does not have the context for what you are asking. Much like the nightmarish images that it generates when asked to generate pictures of people eating spaghetti, AI does not yet understand the somatic emotional context of why you are asking questions about your existential dilemmas nor can it comprehend them. In essence, there are vital aspects of our humanity that words and data cannot access, and thus AI cannot yet help us with them.  

The secret ingredient to good therapy is that your therapist understands the context of what you are saying emotionally and is able to create a unique relationship with you in sessions. What your therapist says is incredibly important but it’s actually the reciprocal relationship between you and your therapist that is the vital factor that makes therapy effective. 

If you feel inspired to chat with someone on our team, get in touch with us for a free consultation.