Generative AI of modern times can be demarked as coming of age when ChatGPT was released in November 2022. There had been many generative AI apps before that date, but none that caught on as ChatGPT has.

I would also dare say that the use of generative AI for mental health can be demarked by that same date. We have only seen generative AI at a sufficient fluency level in the last two years to reasonably say that it is being used for mental health purposes, albeit that we are doing so as part of a grand experiment that I mentioned earlier.

Carl Sagan saw a future consisting of AI for psychotherapeutic treatment. We are still on that journey. The rising use of multi-modal AI capabilities such as vision, hearing, and speaking, will demonstrably up the ante on how alluring generative AI is for mental health guidance, see my analysis at the link here.

Let’s conclude this discussion with two handy quotes from Carl Sagan.

First, in case you are wondering why I dragged you through a historical prediction from the 1970s, I would like to proffer this quote: “You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan is one of many that has noted the importance of understanding the past to aid in a fruitful future.

Lastly, I welcome you to join in the journey and adventure of seeing where AI goes in the performance of psychotherapeutic treatment. As Carl Sagan was oft to say: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

tiny browser-augmented chat client for open-source language models.

Claude Dev goes beyond simple code completion by reading & writing files, creating projects, and executing terminal commands with your permission.

AI agents are overhyped and most of them are simply not ready for mission-critical work.

However, the underlying models and architectures continue to advance quickly, and we can expect to see more successful real-world applications.

Yofardev AI is a small fun project to kind of bring life to a Large Language Model (LLM) through an animated avatar. Users can interact with the AI assistant through text (or dictate to text), and the app responds with generated text2speech, and lip-synced animations.

A new study found that most people think AI chatbots like ChatGPT can have feelings and thoughts, just like humans do. Even though experts say these AIs aren't really conscious, many regular folks believe they are. The study asked 300 Americans about ChatGPT, and two-thirds of them thought it might be self-aware. People who use AI more often were more likely to think this way. The researchers say this matters because what people believe about AI could affect how we use and make rules for it in the future, even if the AIs aren't actually conscious. They also found that most people don't understand consciousness the same way scientists do, but their opinions could still be important for how AI develops.

Summarized by Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Before we so openly accept digital companions, maybe we should stop and think about why we need them in the first place. Is it because they're easier to deal with than humans? Because we’ve trained them to know what to do without us having to activate sulk mode?

If that's the case, maybe what we really need to do is not get better robots but become better humans and communicators ourselves.

To recap some of what I said before, I think we should focus (and the profession should feel less suspicious about) adjunctive uses of AI—treating it as a capable administrative assistant. I think any use of the tech to replace the actual human relationship at the heart of psychotherapy should be viewed with heightened scrutiny. Not because of the guild interests of therapists, but because there is still something that is impossible to technologically replicate about human relationships, even if some of the people interacting with chatbots feel more satisfied by those interactions than by their real-life ones. The solution to that is not necessarily to celebrate the technology that makes them feel that way but to help people improve their capacities for intimacy and relating. That, of course, requires a structural investment in the affordability of mental healthcare, and, at least in the United States, that’s a tall order. So, we might be left with the question of whether chatbot therapy is better than no therapy. Your readers will have to make up their own minds about that.