Maybe you’re comparing it to some idealized view of what human therapy is like? There’s no benchmark for it, but humans struggle in real mental health care. They make terrible mistakes all the time. And human therapy doesn’t scale to the level needed. Millions of people simply go without help. And therapy is generally one hour a week. You’re supposed to sort out your entire life in that window? Impossible. It sets people up for failure.
So, if we had some perfect system for getting every person that needs help the exact therapist they need, meeting as often as they need, then maybe AI therapy would be a bad idea, but that’s not what we have, and we never will.
Personally, I think the best way to scale mental healthcare is through group therapy and communities. Having a community of people all coming together over common issues has always been far more helpful than one on one therapy for me. But getting some assistance from an AI therapist on off hours can also be useful.
Maybe you’re comparing it to some idealized view of what human therapy is like? There’s no benchmark for it, but humans struggle in real mental health care. They make terrible mistakes all the time. And human therapy doesn’t scale to the level needed. Millions of people simply go without help. And therapy is generally one hour a week. You’re supposed to sort out your entire life in that window? Impossible. It sets people up for failure.
So, if we had some perfect system for getting every person that needs help the exact therapist they need, meeting as often as they need, then maybe AI therapy would be a bad idea, but that’s not what we have, and we never will.
Personally, I think the best way to scale mental healthcare is through group therapy and communities. Having a community of people all coming together over common issues has always been far more helpful than one on one therapy for me. But getting some assistance from an AI therapist on off hours can also be useful.