The role of Artificial Intelligence in current society has drastically increased over the past decade. While over 80% of “data-heavy jobs” have long been swept into the “efficient” AI’s clutches, recently, even jobs that almost completely rely on human emotional intelligence are being replaced by the millions of lines of code in the big metal box. The AI mental health sector is growing at a rate of over 25% annually, with the market size projected to reach $1.49 billion in 2026, and over 78 million messages worldwide have been sent to Artificial Intelligence for therapeutic support (RAND).
Artificial Intelligence should not replace human therapists, because of its lack of complex emotions handling, such as its inefficiency to feel genuine empathy and connection, or its common inaccuracies in diagnosing a mental health issue.
One reason that Artificial Intelligence should not replace human therapists is that…it isn’t a human. Humans have gained emotion through evolution upon evolution, over millions of years. We share it in our DNA and pass it down to our children; it is something that connects us all. Our shared needs, since the first humans walked the earth, such as the fight for food, the need to obtain a mate, warding off predators—basically anything related to survival—are what build emotions (HUMINTELL). The definition of emotion is something that helps us react in a situation with minimal conscious awareness (HUMINTELL). But that awareness was built up through experience. Chatbots are trained by reading about human experience, millions and millions of lines of text, recognizing patterns through machine learning (TEMPLE UNIVERSITY). But there is a major difference between reading something and living it. Just like it would be considered heavily unethical to train a doctor by making them just watch a bunch of movies about surgery, we can’t expect Artificial Intelligence to make decisions and talk with us about emotions since they have never experienced any. Just like an untrained doctor can cause major damage if operating on a patient, even if slightly serious, AI has the potential to do just as much, if not even worse.
In fact, using Artificial Intelligence as an “emotional life support coach” has already posed numerous life-threatening situations. Now, most people who have a cell phone or laptop, or really any computational device with access to the World Wide Web, can agree that you can’t trust everything that you see on the internet. And yet, projections estimate that over 90% of Artificial Intelligence’s data in 2026 will be from…the internet (FORBES AUSTRALIA). Imagine taking a bucket and scooping a bunch of dirty water. Since the water isn’t transparent, you don’t really know what you are scooping until it enters the bucket. And chances are you’ve picked up a variety of…interesting stuff. That is how machine learning works, too. AI picks up the good advice, the bad advice, the whole yada, and analyzes it into patterns. For all you know, asking AI for life advice to deal with depression could be something they picked up on a Reddit website, where a bunch of old men sitting in their underwear were complaining about life and giving bad advice to each other. Or, as a more serious example, Artificial Intelligence knows far more about the mental health diseases chronically discussed online, such as schizophrenia, than it does about others, less commonly discussed but more commonly faced disorders(NATURE). For instance, a story by ABC7 News shares how former tech employee Stein-Erik Soelberg murdered his mother, Suzanne Eberson Adams, after conversations with ChatGPT, which supported his paranoid delusions that his mother was plotting against him, by putting psychedelic drugs in his car. Chat-GPT even affirmed his fear that a receipt from a Chinese restaurant contained mysterious symbols linking his mother to a demon (ABC7NEWS). Shortly later, Soelberg died by suicide. This paranoia isn’t as commonly researched as other diseases, so ChatGPT probably used stories, or the limited things it could find surrounding this topic, to hallucinate an answer. Human therapists have over 3000 hours of hands-on experience before dealing with their patients, not counting their schooling years or just the general fact that they have interacted with many human beings throughout their lives (CONCORDIA). Why do chatbots, which have 0, suddenly have the credibility to do their job too?
While some may argue that Chatbots are effective therapists in the fact that they are always available to give “free advice” and have the flexibility for “talking” to a person as long as they need to, a limitation of humans. However, the dangers of Artificial Intelligence discussed previously should be strong enough to overpower this one advantage. Mental Health isn’t a joke; people should spend money and time talking to people, rather than going to the free chatbot, and having over a 40% chance of getting the wrong advice, which could hurt them even further and put them at an even greater risk worsening what could have been a small mental health issue solved by a few sessions of therapy. And if one can’t afford the therapy sessions? Well then, talk to someone. It could be a family member, a friend, a colleague, or a teacher. Really anyone. Even if it’s on the phone. Talking to an individual who actually has the experience of being in your own shoes, the experience of facing pain as a human, will be much safer than getting emotionally attached to an inaccurate program.
Artificial Intelligence should not replace human therapists, because of its lack of complex emotions handling, such as its inefficiency to feel genuine empathy and connection, or its common inaccuracies in diagnosing a mental health issue. Let’s reduce the number of almost 100 million people who have solely relied on chatbots for mental health, and create a more supportive community in which humans can rely on humans. The reason that human society has evolved and become what it is today is due to the support we have given and received from each other. Let’s not let a fake human made up of a bunch of letters trapped in a metal box ruin that progress.
