Superb piece Michael. They are almost us, they are a disease, and I'm not sure what will stop them supplanting human therapists altogether. Is there something physical about therapy, such that it works better with another human being than a bot? There had better be. Because if not we may be headed into a Spike Jonze vision, except with therapists instead of Scarlett Johannsen. It sounds both horribly dystopic and quite convenient and reassuring at the same time.
There is something meta physical about therapy I think which depends on the physical proximity of the embodied minds engaged in it. Unconcsious communication - that sense that your partner is in a mood etc, is at the heart of it IMO. Even online work with humans - though helplful, valid and no doubt vital for some is subordinate to in the room work IMO. "It is first and foremost and embodied ego," said Freud. Klein's ideas of projective identification are very much in-(intra) person. So much of what happens is about pre verbal, infantile, parent and child ways of being (and being frustrated). I have seen people arguing that an AI baby sitter would be more dependable, safer etc than a human distractedly addresssing their phone, boyfriend or whatever - these are the early salvos of a 'wire mother' movement that would have blown Harry Harlow's mind, I think.
"Unconscious communication" is the next great mystery to be unravelled. I have a feeling the immense pressure that AI is exerting is going to simultaneously create a religious revival, perhaps a new religion entirely, and also scientific discoveries about what you're talking about, the mysteries of interpersonal "energy" and communication.
Superb piece Michael. They are almost us, they are a disease, and I'm not sure what will stop them supplanting human therapists altogether. Is there something physical about therapy, such that it works better with another human being than a bot? There had better be. Because if not we may be headed into a Spike Jonze vision, except with therapists instead of Scarlett Johannsen. It sounds both horribly dystopic and quite convenient and reassuring at the same time.
There is something meta physical about therapy I think which depends on the physical proximity of the embodied minds engaged in it. Unconcsious communication - that sense that your partner is in a mood etc, is at the heart of it IMO. Even online work with humans - though helplful, valid and no doubt vital for some is subordinate to in the room work IMO. "It is first and foremost and embodied ego," said Freud. Klein's ideas of projective identification are very much in-(intra) person. So much of what happens is about pre verbal, infantile, parent and child ways of being (and being frustrated). I have seen people arguing that an AI baby sitter would be more dependable, safer etc than a human distractedly addresssing their phone, boyfriend or whatever - these are the early salvos of a 'wire mother' movement that would have blown Harry Harlow's mind, I think.
"Unconscious communication" is the next great mystery to be unravelled. I have a feeling the immense pressure that AI is exerting is going to simultaneously create a religious revival, perhaps a new religion entirely, and also scientific discoveries about what you're talking about, the mysteries of interpersonal "energy" and communication.
It's The Untouchables. "AI copies a knife - humanity realises it actually has a gun."