AI can’t be all that bad. The problem I’m always seeing with AI is a double-edged sword. You have corporations shoving AI in just about everything, treating it like its a cure for cancer and that really rubs people the wrong way. Then, on a more of a society level, you’ve got people who use AI for an assortment of things like making art with AI and still accredit themselves as an artist to people who treat AI like a therapist when it is not advised to.
However, I’ve found some benefits with AI. For example, I’m chatting with ChatGPT on credit cards, because it is something I may lean towards getting into. It’s helping me better understand than most people have tried explaining to me. Simply because it is giving me a more stream-lined response than people just beating the bush.
I’m a therapist. I use HIPAA compliant AI to generate my (editable) case notes for my sessions now. Not only is it a huge time saver to simply edit a generated note as opposed to making one from scratch, but in many cases it takes more detailed notes, including quotes from clients.
I have heard of other therapists and medical doctors also using AI to help with diagnosing.
The danger is when therapistsdon’t review the content to check for accuracy. Because occasionally it will generate something not really reflective of what the therapist might have been doing, or it might lack detail that the therapist might have otherwise inclused. But more often the stuff it comes up with is surprisingly accurate.And editing is even easier when you can just tell the AI something like, “include more details about how the client noticed their pattern of putting their own feelings last,” and it just does what you asked. You don’t necessarily have to edit manually, though you can.
I dislike this immensely and actively seek health care providers that don’t use these tools.
My core problem is that I want a professional who engages with me as a human and knows me.
I’m a professional (not in health care) but I “know” all of my clients, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation for a client or patient. When I pay $100 to talk to a GP for 10 minutes, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for them to have a conversation with me, really truly listen to me, and spend a few minutes writing some notes.
In the case of a mental health professional the time spent after an appointment with a patient is much greater. I don’t really want what I’ve said to be automatically converted to notes for a human to review. I want a human to consider the human to human conversation we have had, in the context of other conversations we have had and the relationship I have with them, and use those insights to produce appropriate documentation.
Finally, I have a strongly held belief that relying on the assistance of gen AI reduces one’s skills and abilities. For example, consider two therapists who have just completed their education and accreditation and start seeing patients. One uses gen AI to produce notes for every patient, the other eschews this practice. Ten years later, which therapist would you really trust to listen to patients and be able to distill the key elements of the conversation both spoken and unspoken?
That said, I’m aware that these services are becoming an industry standard. I suppose they may help therapists see more patients, and in the context of public health that might be a good thing. Whether or not I would use a service like this if I were a therapist is a difficult question to answer. If I were just starting out I think I probably would. That is to say my beef isn’t with you personally using a service like this, more that it’s becoming an industry standard.