This story was originally published in our July/August 2022 issue as "Chatbots Have Arrived." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
Reclining on a therapist’s couch as they scribble away on a notepad may soon become more of a rarity. For starters, a growing shortage of mental health professionals could make conventional therapy more difficult to find: Right now, the U.S. needs over 6,300 additional providers to accommodate the current demand. And as of spring 2021, over a third of Americans lived in regions with relatively low access to such care, a phenomenon that’s more pronounced in rural areas.
But a growing crop of artificial intelligence technologies might be able to address those needs. Today, anyone with a smartphone can access conversational agent phone apps, or chatbots, meant to help users cope with the anxieties of daily life. These AI language-processing systems can imitate human discussion ...
