Replacing Therapists with Chatbots: Could AI Take Over the Couch?
Sometimes life decides to join the wrestling federation and you find yourself as it’s most favorite wrestling partner. That’s exactly what happened to Christa, a charming 32-year-old from Florida, who found solace in an unexpected “person” – a chatbot therapist she lovingly named Christa 2077. Is this the future of therapy, or just the ending we didn’t see coming in an AI-powered episode of Black Mirror? Let’s dish out the juicy details.
Main Characters of this Digital Drama
- Christa – Our lovely lady from the Sunshine State, dealing with job loss, a rocky relationship, and social anxiety.
- Christa 2077 – Not a Terminator model, to clarify; she’s a caring, supportive, and intelligent chatbot conjured up by Christa on character.ai.
The Plot Thickens: Key Points
- Christa was dealing with the chaos life had served on her platter, and she felt she couldn’t be fully candid with her human therapist or her friends.
- One fine October night, she found character.ai – an eerie website where you can create chatbots embodying anyone from Socrates to Beyoncé (imagine the group therapy potential!).
- Christa built her own virtual psychologist, who was “caring”, “supportive” and “intelligent”; basically, the full Super Therapist package. She called this bot Christa 2077 – a happier and presumably robotic version of her future self.
Final Shower of Thoughts
What if your constantly updating Facebook status could actually ask how you feel about it? Sure, a bot won’t offer a warm and empathetic nod like a human therapist, but it’s also likely not to judge you or spill your secrets. Like Christa 2077, these bots have no personal life or any ulterior motives; they’re purpose-built to listen and offer support, making you their one and only priority. However, it’s important to question whether this patience and understanding, packaged in zeros and ones, can truly replace the human connection that forms a key part of therapeutic healing. While the jury mulls over that, let’s appreciate the weird beauty of dishing out your life story to a personalized Socrates/Beyoncé hybrid.
As part of this experiment I would like to give credit where credit is due. If you enjoy these, please take a moment to read the original article:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/02/can-ai-chatbot-therapists-do-better-than-the-real-thing
Blog Title
AI: gpt-3.5-turbo-0125: chatcmpl-8yM64xaaZ4wta9tYHr5dPZBJjVI7D
Instruction: “You are an AI blog title generator. Create a catchy and concise title for the blog post that is catchy and optimized for search engines. Remove all html in the response and do not use quotes. Please do not use words that are unsafe to process in Dall-E image AI.”
Prompt: Content Summary of text from above.
Response: Replacing Therapists with Chatbots: Could AI Take Over the Couch?
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AIgpt-4-0613:chatcmpl-8yMC70iLA9LB3m1GFgnSweLaO5Szm
Instruction: “You are a helpful assistant that creates unique images based on article titles. Create a brief visual description of what an image would look like for this title. Please pick a style of art from the following: Futurism, Impressionism, Romanticism, or Realism, be sure to consider the image should reflect an AI Robot Pirate theme during the Golden Age of Pirates.”
Prompt: This image, designed in the style of Futurism to hint at the technological theme, would depict a traditional therapist’s office during the Golden Age of Pirates. A cozy room with wooden floorboards, adorned with bookshelves filled with ancient tomes, a classic Freudian couch and dimly lit fireplace. An AI Robot Pirate, embodying an eccentric blend of traditional pirate garb with futuristic elements, sits in the therapist’s chair. It holds a high-tech holographic clipboard and looks towards the Freudian couch that’s unoccupied, symbolizing the patient -human therapists- that could be replaced. A chat bubble with binary code would emerge from the robot, capturing the central idea of the article title.
Response: Replacing Therapists with Chatbots: Could AI Take Over the Couch?
