Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article suggests an interesting direction for home therapy: artificial intelligence. There's a great need for accessible care for mental illness, but, at least in the US, the supply of good therapists is minimal and extremely expensive. Some estimates say 4 in 5 people in the US have some kind of mental health issue. But of course, US healthcare means most of those people can't afford one, even with an expensive healthcare plan. Or the number of allowed visits is set so you barely see the therapist.
The result of all this has been attempts to go outside the established (failing) system. Thousands of self-help books and meditation apps exist, and dozens of online guides and apps for personal improvement. Heck, I even spent a week trying out an AI therapist. I wasn't blown away, but it wasn't terrible either. Just not super helpful to me personally.
The article is right in that there aren't really set rules for AI therapy. Like many developing technologies, the rules are pretty much what you make of them. Woebot, Wysa, and others are developed by people with backgrounds in both coding and therapy, so they adhere to those ideas and frameworks fairly well. But there's nothing set in stone, and so people will continue to be alarmed by the possibilities.
I do have to personally laugh at the very last sentence. Yes, it's a possibility that an autistic person might take to interacting with a robot more easily than with people. We've certainly taken to communicating better electronically than we often do in person. That does not magically pull the autistic person out of living in a whole world full of people. It might lead to interesting possibilities in terms of bridging the technological gap, which... come to think of it, is the subject of a science fiction book series I read growing up... (I emailed the author once. She told me the relevant characters weren't meant to read as autistic, but they do anyway.)
I do think technologies like Woebot and Wysa have a ways to go yet before they could serve a larger population base, but it's a lot more feasible now than it was when I was growing up. I don't think you can ever entirely replace a good human therapist, but for serving basic mental health needs and getting a good knowledge base and a place to start, we could do a lot worse than AIs. Especially AIs with mandatory ethics.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
Today's article suggests an interesting direction for home therapy: artificial intelligence. There's a great need for accessible care for mental illness, but, at least in the US, the supply of good therapists is minimal and extremely expensive. Some estimates say 4 in 5 people in the US have some kind of mental health issue. But of course, US healthcare means most of those people can't afford one, even with an expensive healthcare plan. Or the number of allowed visits is set so you barely see the therapist.
The result of all this has been attempts to go outside the established (failing) system. Thousands of self-help books and meditation apps exist, and dozens of online guides and apps for personal improvement. Heck, I even spent a week trying out an AI therapist. I wasn't blown away, but it wasn't terrible either. Just not super helpful to me personally.
The article is right in that there aren't really set rules for AI therapy. Like many developing technologies, the rules are pretty much what you make of them. Woebot, Wysa, and others are developed by people with backgrounds in both coding and therapy, so they adhere to those ideas and frameworks fairly well. But there's nothing set in stone, and so people will continue to be alarmed by the possibilities.
I do have to personally laugh at the very last sentence. Yes, it's a possibility that an autistic person might take to interacting with a robot more easily than with people. We've certainly taken to communicating better electronically than we often do in person. That does not magically pull the autistic person out of living in a whole world full of people. It might lead to interesting possibilities in terms of bridging the technological gap, which... come to think of it, is the subject of a science fiction book series I read growing up... (I emailed the author once. She told me the relevant characters weren't meant to read as autistic, but they do anyway.)
I do think technologies like Woebot and Wysa have a ways to go yet before they could serve a larger population base, but it's a lot more feasible now than it was when I was growing up. I don't think you can ever entirely replace a good human therapist, but for serving basic mental health needs and getting a good knowledge base and a place to start, we could do a lot worse than AIs. Especially AIs with mandatory ethics.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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