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I mean AI therapy could succeed simply because it has the potential to be cheaper and easier to access than the competition. Definitely easier than scheduling i

I mean AI therapy could succeed simply because it has the potential to be cheaper and easier to access than the competition. Definitely easier than scheduling in person therapy. And when comparing to the current cheapest and lowest friction easy access products, they are just not very good. Most are poor to use from a technical perspective, and all from a quality of care perspective. Beyond price and ease of access, talking to a robot that isn't even capable of judging you might even be more appealing to some people. Would a therapy tuned gpt-4 be adequate? Probably not, but who knows what the landscape looks like in a decade or two. This is all obviously US centric and a biased opinion based on my personal experience.Talkspace is currently the best among these products in my experience, but that's only from a UX perspective, they all suffer from the same fundamental Uber for Therapy problems.

tivert 3y ago
> I mean AI therapy could succeed simply because it has the potential to be cheaper and easier to access than the competition. So basically, a repetition of the exact same point made upthread about nurse practitioners and AI? Instead of the "goal should be to allow everyone equitable access to the best healthcare," we choose "subpar AI healthcare for the disadvantaged [or merely non-wealthy] because 'it’s better than nothing'." I should also note that therapy only came up in a joke mocking the myopia of too technology focused ideas of progress. > Beyond price and ease of access, talking to a robot that isn't even capable of judging you might even be more appealing to some people. I suppose, for a small subset of physiological problems and a certain uncommon types of people (which are likely vastly underrepresented among software engineers, especially those on HN), but my guess is that the impossibility of any kind of human connection is going to be a huge negative for most.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
  I'm not saying it's good, just that it feels like an inevitability given the state of US mental healthcare.

tivert 3y ago

> I mean AI therapy could succeed simply because it has the potential to be cheaper and easier to access than the competition. So basically, a repetition of the exact same point made upthread about nurse practitioners and AI? Instead of the "goal should be to allow everyone equitable access to the best healthcare," we choose "subpar AI healthcare for the disadvantaged [or merely non-wealthy] because 'it’s better than nothing'." I should also note that therapy only came up in a joke mocking the myopia of too technology focused ideas of progress. > Beyond price and ease of access, talking to a robot that isn't even capable of judging you might even be more appealing to some people. I suppose, for a small subset of physiological problems and a certain uncommon types of people (which are likely vastly underrepresented among software engineers, especially those on HN), but my guess is that the impossibility of any kind of human connection is going to be a huge negative for most.

fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
I'm not saying it's good, just that it feels like an inevitability given the state of US mental healthcare.