Is a chatbot better than a therapist? Why pay for weekly sessions when you can have therapy on-demand any time of day or night? Some of these on-demand services even come from real therapists. It’s cheaper, faster, and you can have it anytime you want. 

On-demand therapy caters to a growing expectation that we shouldn’t have to wait, that getting what we want when we want it is best for us. We can order anything delivered to us while lying on our backs staring into our personalized devices, already curated to meet our every wish. Wish-fulfilling genies live in our hands day and night. This is great, right? What could go wrong??

Our decreased tolerance for delayed gratification turns interactions that were formerly relational into robotic dopamine dispensers. The dispenser is predictable, controllable, and we each get our very own, so we don’t even have to share! But learning to share, dealing with unpredictable interactions, and moving through a world that is beyond our control are essential components of living together. We learn these skills by practicing, getting hurt, disappointed, frustrated, and figuring out how to soften and open again.

Getting back to therapy, I find that new patients often expect quick results, to immediately have their discomfort eliminated. This immediate amelioration decreases our tolerance for the distress of everyday life. Building the capacity to hold tension between sessions with a therapist, to experience longing and aversion toward that person, and then to bring it into conversation when we meet again – this is essential training for relationships. And it’s often in this friction where our greatest insights emerge.

Insurance companies want to pay therapists less, and replacing them with 24/7 chatbots spends less money. As therapists are paid less, more are willing to participate in exploitive on-demand therapy services, treating dozens if not hundreds of clients, responding to texts, jumping into video calls, dispensing quick, superficial treatment that smoothes over immediate wrinkles without creating lasting change. The demand for quick fix and immediate pleasure diminishes our value of long-form, in-depth therapy. In this changing therapeutic landscape, even real humans can imitate machines, turning into feel-good dispensers. 

Patients come to see me suspicious of how our work will affect them. This is healthy, an expected result of risking vulnerability. We will both be impacted by our time together. I will feel their stories, think deeply about what they share, engage with the unspoken words they cannot yet say outloud. That is how this relationship works. I take in what the patient cannot yet bear to say or even think, I feel it, and then feed it back in a form that is more digestible. 

AI cannot think or feel. It ruthlessly plagiarizes, aggregates human ideas, and mashes this together into an imitation of connection. AI has no conscience, and AI feels no consequence. 

When we give our minds to machines, we imply that our idiosyncratic selves are inferior to the smoothed over glean of soulless algorithms. I prefer irregularities, to mix my heart and mind with others and discover the unexpected results of our unique blend.

This article was written, edited, and posted entirely by an organic human. I’m happy to claim all bruises and lumps as my own.