The first trial of generative AI therapy shows it might help with depression – MIT Technology Review

Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, an assistant professor of health ethics at Simon Fraser University who has written about AI therapy bots but was not involved in the research, says the results are impressive but notes that just like any other clinical trial, this one doesn’t necessarily represent how the treatment would act in the real world. “We remain far from a ‘greenlight’ for widespread clinical deployment,” he wrote in an email.

One issue is the supervision that wider deployment might require. During the beginning of the trial, Jacobson says, he personally oversaw all the messages coming in from participants (who consented to the arrangement) to watch out for problematic responses from the bot. If therapy bots needed this oversight, they wouldn’t be able to reach as many people.

I asked Jacobson if he thinks the results validate the burgeoning industry of AI therapy sites. “Quite the opposite,” he says, cautioning that most don’t appear to train their models on evidence-based practices like cognitive behavioral therapy, and they likely don’t employ a team of trained researchers to monitor interactions. “I have a lot of concerns about the industry and how fast we’re moving without really kind of evaluating this,” he adds.