I think it could replace a lot of therapists, which may say more about a lot of therapists than it says about AI. Someone who will listen to you and make sympat

I think it could replace a lot of therapists, which may say more about a lot of therapists than it says about AI. Someone who will listen to you and make sympathetic noises, maybe toss in a perspective gleaned from mainstream thinking here and there, but never challenge you so hard that you stop coming back for more paid sessions. Cynicism aside, that might be okay for some people. If you need to talk about something to get it out of your system, and you don't have any friends willing to listen to you cry in your beer for a couple hours, maybe "talking" to an AI isn't a terrible replacement. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine people turning it into a weird dependency if they stop thinking of it as a sort of sounding board and start seeing it as a real "friend."