BREAKING NEWS: AI GENERATED THERAPIST APPLIES TO BE AN ACCREDITED EMDR PRACTITIONER (APRIL 2023)
Well not quite yet, so breathe a sigh of relief. Your job is safe for a while!
What about five years from now? Not so sure, as it’s quite likely, based on current developments, that there will be AI generated EMDR therapists at work in five years’ time.
As I, (Richard Worthing-Davies), wrote in the EMDR Therapy quarterly (Winter 2021), the rapid development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is likely to be highly disruptive in health care diagnosis and delivery over the coming years. I pointed out, though, that most so called AI machines are designed to perform singular tasks – e.g. spotting cancer in patient scans. While these machines seem intelligent, they do not mimic or replicate human intelligence, they simply mimic human behaviour.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is very different. The concept is of a machine that mimics human intelligence and/or behaviour with the ability to learn and apply its intelligence to solve any problem. Such a machine simulates the way a human thinks – but much faster. I wrote at the time: ‘To date AGI has not been achieved and may not for some years’.
Well, I was wrong and too pessimistic! Such machines do now exist. Machine-learning based chatbots employ software that learns from interactions with a human, can infer context, refer to older conversations and offer resources to help answer questions. And, because it uses a type of AI called “machine learning” it actually improves over time. That sounds very like a human therapist who learns from experience with clients, reads articles and accesses other modes of learning to match with what they think their clients need.
Two recent AI applications suggest this future is nearer than we ever thought, with one AI machine already engaged in a legal battle!
Fedha is the perfect news reader, calm under pressure and doesn’t fumble her words. She is the latest AI-generated broadcaster, and the first presenter in Kuwait. She speaks Arabic and will soon do so with a Kuwaiti accent. Updates will soon enable her to read news bulletins; and while a jerky facial expression and blank stare betray Fedha’s lack of humanity, there is little doubt that AI will soon solve that too.
The second development addresses the question of whether AI can be truly inventive, and it’s this machine that’s ‘in court’. We know, as therapists that we sometimes need to be inventive and creative in treating our clients – using some adaption of a particular protocol to address an unusual situation, for example. It’s been assumed by many that such creativity is beyond AI models, even though they are often used by researchers to find new inventions.
On March 2nd 2023, a unique case was heard in the Supreme Court in London. An American computer scientist named Dr Thaler had applied to the British Intellectual Property Office for patents on two inventions – a beverage container and a search-and- rescue device. According to the Times Newspaper, the application was denied – not because the inventions lacked novelty but because the named inventor was not a human being!
Normally, applicants put the name of the person who have worked with an AI machine as the inventor. Up until now, that has not been a problem because AI has always needed human assistance. But Dr Thaler says that his machine, DABUS (short for ‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’) came up with the inventions without any human intervention. The questions this raises are profound. There is some uncertainty in British law over who or what can claim credit for an invention. The Patents Act of 1977 was written long before its drafters could imagine robots creating anything! But if the Supreme Court does interpret the law to include machines, the implications are huge – too huge to discuss, unfortunately. However, the truly significant thing we need to heed here is not about the law, but it’s the development of an AI machine that is truly creative.
So, should we be afraid? Elon Musk and many other scientists and entrepreneurs in this field seem to be, and advocate slowing the development down. So should we?
I think we would be very short-sighted to follow this advice. We’ve already seen how AI can accelerate progress that humans couldn’t achieve alone in genomics. These include breakthroughs in cancer treatment and a solution to the so-called ‘protein-folding problem’ that has defied researchers for years and is likely to be key to developing new drugs. As a former organic chemistry graduate, I am aware of the complexity of the problem and I’m amazed by this breakthrough.
With the NHS at breaking-point and resources for public services likely to be restricted for years to come, we cannot afford to delay the opportunities that AI might bring, among which could be AI generated EMDR therapy delivered by a non-human machine that continually learns, improves the more work it does, and never gets tired or goes on strike!
Of course, it could all end in the Supreme Court over the question of whether only a human can be accredited as a therapist! Well, we can hope not.
References
1. EMDR Therapy Quarterly, Winter 2021, Vol 3, No 1.
2. The Times Newspaper, 2/04/2023
3. Economist Newspaper, 11/03/2023
4. The Times Newspaper, 11/04/2023