Could robots be counselors? Early research shows positive user experience

It appears that therapists need not even be human when it comes to delivering therapies aimed at behavioural change,

(Emphasis added).

A quantitative study that will measure...whether people think they are doing more. Based on the initial study, and what we know about subjective measures of talk therapies for behavior modification, I predict the study will show that human therapists can be exchanged for robot ones with little loss of efficacy

https://techxplore.com/news/2018-05-robots-counselors-early-positive-user.amp

 

No way that robots can replace humans. Unless maybe the robots wear blue cardigans or some similarly impressive equivalent.

 

On the plus side, all the suddenly unemployed therapists will have "someone" to talk to.

 

Perhaps robots would be better than humans at determining which diagnosed psych patients are actually misdiagnosed ME/CFS patients.

 

I would assume that any "consultation" with a robot was being recorded, and I would be worried about who was listening to it. If I speak to a human therapist at least I have a real person to liaise with. But with a robot? I wouldn't trust anyone to tell me the truth about who has access to the recording, and it isn't possible to take a robot to court about betraying confidential information.

 

I would have a serious issue....

I love figuring out how things work and taking them apart. I still remember Cindy-gate when I dismantled my sister's doll because I wanted to know how they got her arms to bend (elastic internally in the joint).

Turns out my ability at reassembling wasn't quite as good.

Could I just play with the robot instead?

 

Don’t forget the pottery classes

 

As it's considered unethical for a therapist/counselor and their patient to be overly "friendly" does that mean it's ethically and morally fine (in fact practically a public duty) for a patient to unscrew a robot therapist?

 

the quality of the robots coding would be down to the people who design the code or at least the parameters of the code . which in the case of b p s lot guarantees gigo garbage in garbage out . but nice would give it the go ahead if it meant one robot giving a series of "supportive" classes to all patients newly classified as having somataform disorders . think of the savings thousands of patients being brainwashed into believing all their health problems were caused by faulty beliefs and over awareness of their bodily symptoms. by just one robot or a recording of said robot after all once it has completed the set amount of classes you only have to show the recordings to the next groups of patients.

 

How about a blue t-shirt? What could go wrong?


"Hear me now and believe me later. You look like a flabby little girly man. Have you seen Sarah Connor? You need more exercise! I'm going to recommend some CBT. That's 'Conan's Barbarian Therapy.' Have you seen Sarah Connor? No, I am NOT a robot! I am a Cyberdine Systems series T-800 Model 101 Graded Exercise Terminator, and I am here to pump you up! Are certain you haven't seen Sarah Connor? OK. I going to prescribe a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range. I think I have a sample outside. I'll be back."

 

"Talk with me if you want to live."

 

Crude stuff. What we need is Artificial Intelligence, not robots.

i.e. the people programming the robot have already decided what’s desirable and how the task should be performed.

'perceived as'. The whole value of where we're going with technology now is that is IS non-judgmental, not that it's perceived that way. Programming a 21st century technology system to deliver a human-scripted motivational interview is like solving a complex equation on your laptop by writing the figures and symbols on the screen with a Sharpie pen. It’ll sort of work, but only if your maths is good enough in the first place. The machine would certainly do a better job without you.

True AI systems are going to be much better at investigation and diagnosis and therapy than any human, especially because of the absence of confirmation bias and beliefs. This programmed proxy is absolutely not the way to proceed.

There's an arrogance in this approach of programming a robot to carry out the instructions of the psychologists, a presumption that all technology is good for is carrying out our orders to the letter. AI systems have already gone way beyond that. Google's Alpha neural network is currently exploring protein folding on a level humans can barely understand. A few months ago they gave it the day off and invited it to teach itself chess. After a few hours of playing against itself it became stronger than any programmed chess engine (and those were already way stronger than any human player). All Google's programmers did was tell it the rules of the game. It figured out how to play the game all on its own, just by doing it. Just imagine what that network might achieve if unleashed on ME bio data banks.

The sort of approach described in this article and paper will seem comical to people even 20 years from now.

 

I swear I hear my robot therapist coming up the steps, but he never seems to get here.

 

Don't you just love the way these folk so easily slip into their favourite fantasy - that they can measure people's feelings with sufficient objectivity to produce validly quantitative readings.