Can Psychology Be Automated?

“So tell me about your relationship with your mother”. “Mhm good good, that’s very interesting, now please wait while I download the best ways to cope with having been raised as a German Shepard.”

Now is that the future of psychology?

Seriously though, computers are becoming more and more interactive every day, from video games giving you an ego boost by telling you, “You’re the hero of Gandor”, to your smart devices cheering you up when you’re feeling down. “Hey phone, make me feel better.”  Haha, time well spent, thank you phone.

But could the future of psychology be actually artificial?

We already have algorithmic technology that can cater to products that you will want to order online so is it really that farfetched to think psychology might one day be replaced by a computer program? Eliza was a popular computer program back in the 70’s. All it would do was emulate a psychotherapist and simply pair it back to patients what they had just typed in but as a question. And a lot of people took this as actual understanding, which it wasn’t.

To be sure a lot of progress has been made since then. But as comfortable as it is to spill your guts out to a flesh and blood human being and with telemedicine becoming so popular in a post 2020 world, how far off are we from that virtual appointment including a virtual therapist? Think it’s off in the distant future?

Meet Ellie who is an AI psychotherapist who was developed by USC Institute for Creative Technologies. She can apparently read 60 nonverbal cues a second and is part of a project called SimSensi that is funded by the US government agency DARPA. It’s already being used to help American soldiers who are potentially suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and so far the results have been pretty good.

Here’s a demo video that is actually 2 years old. So what do you think? Would you be comfortable getting counseling from an Artificial  Intelligence? You can check with your phone to make sure it’s ok.