On February 12, a new study, “When ELIZA meets therapists: A Turing test for the heart and mind” suggests AI in psychotherapy, particularly ChatGPT, may rival or even surpass human therapists in generating empathetic responses.
Carried out by H. Dorian Hatch of Ohio State University, the study employed over 800 volunteers, presented with 18 instances of couples therapy and asked to evaluate responses without knowing whether they had been created by a human or by AI for psychotherapy machines.
To their amazement, most could not tell the difference, confirming Alan Turing’s theory that someday machines would be able to produce human-like responses.
With AI in psychotherapyhaving a bigger integral role in mental health treatment, the authors compared ChatGPT’s responses to those of licensed therapists and found participants rated the AI’s responses consistently higher on psychotherapy principles, raising questions about the future of AI based psychotherapy
ChatGPT’s Psychotherapy AI
The authors discovered AI in psychotherapy on ChatGPT’s answers were longer and contained more adjectives and nouns than human therapists, providing more context to help the AI.
The researchers believe that these findings may be historic for the future: the future of therapy. According to the researchers, these results may be the first hint that ChatGPT can be employed to facilitate psychotherapeutic procedures, the authors said. This suggests that AI can be employed to augment therapists, develop new intervention approaches, and provide mental health care more widely.
But they also discussed training in psychotherapy and AI and how to regulate it with the use of AI in healthcare, where technical skills of mental health professionals may have to be upgraded to properly and ethically applied technology.
AI and psychotherapy continue to grow together, this study highlights both the potential and the challenges of integrating AI into mental health care, shaping the future of therapy as we know it.
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