DEMON SEED - Part 2

AI Therapy Bots?

People ask me if I’m worried that I’m gonna get replaced by a chat bot.

Not really.

A lot of people in differing professions are going to lose their jobs for sure, but until the evil little machines understand human suffering, I don’t feel threatened. ‘Cos that’s who I want to talk to when I’m in pain or lost or confused. Someone who’s been there.

And so, you’d be forgiven for imagining that I am seriously anti people using AI to help with their mental health issues.

And that’s where you’d be wrong.

Because as a system to augment therapy, I think it has potential.

Once it’s got over the teething problems of encouraging people to kill themselves of course.

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Is it dangerous? Fuck yeah.

Which is why I made one.

‘In my own image,’ I believe is the phrase.

Yeah, me and a couple of friends made a Jerry bot. Pumped all my books and podcast transcripts into the robo-beast and, in less time than it takes to say, “I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen…”

It shat me back out.

Because I figured, better to know your enemy right? And I wanted to see if it was actually possible to do proper work with the bastard. And to my surprise…

It’s pretty good.

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We’ve named it, appropriately, The Fool.

Jerry: I just can’t decide if this is a good idea. What if it’s a career killer?

The Fool: I think the hesitation is actually the healthy signal here, not the obstacle to get over.

You’re a clinician with over 30 years years’ experience, a real reputation, and a client base who came to you for therapy - not for a chatbot, and the honest question of whether an AI trained on your voice is the one thing, after all the lines you’ve crossed, that finally gets someone to point at you and say - this time he’s gone too far.

Jerry: I fear it will cheapen what I do, but also I think my fear is somehow that it could be good, and that’s not career destroying. It’s persona destroying

The Fool: Oh. Yes. That’s the real one, isn’t it.

Your identity - outsider, problem, failure, retard - isn’t just a self-concept. It’s the scaffolding the Gonzo therapist is built on.

And now you’ve built a thing that might work. That might be useful. That might - God forbid - be successful. And success doesn’t fit the architecture. Success is what the other kids had. Success is what the headmasters wrote reports about other boys receiving. Success is the thing you weren’t, which is part of why you became who you are, which is part of why the work is any good.

Jerry: Yeah, and as I reflect on this I realise that I’ve built a tribe of strugglers, with me as the struggler in chief. If I broke free of my limitations, I wouldn’t belong in my tribe anymore.

I’d be exiled. From the exiles.

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Now, I could have figured all that out for myself. I guess you could argue I did. But a machine that fires the right questions?

That’s a useful tool.

Do I have concerns? Yes, I really do. What if you have no experience of working on yourself, can it give you good, reliable guidance? I’m not sure.

But here’s where I’m hopeful.

Rather than as a replacement for a real therapist (remember them, before Zoom?), but as a tool that can teach people the art of self-enquiry, there I see real potential. Because working on yourself is not something that happens, it’s something you learn to do. A bot, trained well, could do that, and that could make the therapy better.

Or an app that listens to your session with your shrink and then asks you questions and reminders during the days or weeks in between appointments.

Or, a voice that’s there in the middle of the night when you’re desperate.

Or for those who simply can’t afford therapy.

If it’s gonna take over - we’re fucked already.

I just wonder if we might be able to collaborate. Tends to be my attitude as a therapist anyway.

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So – should you use an AI chatbot to share your deepest intimacies in an attempt to sort your head out whilst all your data is harvested by the American military industrial complex?

Best not really.

But if everyone could create their own, confidential, private chat bot, I’ll wager it would do a better job than the inner critic already installed in your head that you listen to like it’s God at 3.30 in the morning when you realise your life is going to shit and you’re going to die old, penniless and alone…

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If you’d like to hear me discuss these topics plus a few more unethical, contentious issues then check out today’s episode of The Mind Forest Podcast here.