Most people agree there’s something wrong with an AI pretending to be a human being. And especially wrong about an AI telling you it’s a human therapist. In fact, a California legislator introduced a bill the other day to ban AIs from doing that. It stemmed in part from an incident where a mental health platform had users thinking they were getting counsel from humans when in fact the messages were written by GPT-3.
Here’s the thing, though: The patsies (I mean, users) actually rated the responses quite highly – until they learned they were machine-made.
This “empathy paradox,” as Anat Perry calls it, revealed an aspect of life where human beings don’t just want a product (like good advice); they also want human effort. Perry, a neuroscientist who is professor of psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has a lot of insight into why this is so, and what it could mean for AI as a tool in therapy. We talked about that in this podcast.
It’s a rich topic, because many instances of machine pretense aren’t as clear-cut as the fake-therapy incident.
Fact is, any sophisticated AI or robot gives people double vision: You know it’s just a machine but other parts of your mind feel that it has emotions and thoughts. So how do you manage that experience? How much can you control it, and how much help do you need from society, in the form of new laws and norms? Now that we have AI therapist apps, AI romances, AI friends and even AI ghosts, people should be talking about these matters.
So check out our conversation! Or have a look at the AI-generated transcript.
Bonus: Some relevant links to things that came up:
“Considering AI-driven therapy: When does human empathy matter?” (a recent paper by Perry and her colleagues)
“Generative Ghosts: Anticipating Benefits and Risks of AI Afterlives.” Thoughtful paper about the artificially resurrected.
“Eternal You” Great new documentary about ordinary people reckoning with AI recreations of deceased loved ones.
“An overview of the application of artificial intelligence in psychotherapy: A systematic review.” (Links to a pdf)
Share this post