Can AI ever replace a human therapist?

In an?essay?on AI & Mental Health, Thomas Insel MD asked ChatGPT-4:

Could an AI ever replace a psychotherapist?

ChatGPT-4's answer was insightful:?

"While artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve mental health care, it is unlikely that it will replace human psychotherapists entirely."

Ensel went on to articulate aspects of AI that can deliver value along human care.?

We agree! AI can deliver value starting with modalities that are structured. i.e. have a flow, terminology and in a way a 'process' that can be operationalized. We also believe that as we advance, many modalities can and will be integrated into an expert model that can deliver value along side a human professional.?

For instance, within a 30-day typical residency at a treatment facility, we estimate that?Sentur can increase the number of personalized therapy sessions a patient receives from 10 to 90. This isn't about replacing the essential human-delivered sessions but?augmenting?them with 80 additional sessions tailored to the patient's needs. Most?importantly, these sessions are not standalone but are integrated and aligned with the therapeutic goals?set by their human therapist. Sentur collaboratively works with therapists to customize these additional sessions, in realtime, ensuring they are a coherent part of the patient's therapeutic journey.

Building these expert technologies that can be harmonized and blended into a treatment plan along a human are a game changer for delivering care and dramatically improving outcomes!??

Thoughts on the Hippocratic AI - Polaris Paper

If you haven't read the Hippocratic AI - Polaris paper that is making it's rounds on the internet, you should! There are many companies building and fine tuning models and, as we all know, your model is a good as your data. Right??

Not entirely! The architecture upon which these models are built is equally crucial. Expecting your model to have perfect expertise on day one is not realistic. What truly differentiates one model from another is the architecture that enables a quick and iterative approach to:

1. Accurately identify gaps in knowledge and
2. Supplementing the system with that knowledge without needing to re-train the entire system.

I believe the Polaris 'Constellation' architecture delivers that agile architecture while maintaining a general safety layer that can be independently trained.?

Training Models for Behavioral Health

Given that we are in the context of AI and training, I thought we'd use this space to talk a bit about training models for behavioral health.?

There are several challenges that need to be addressed to create an immensely engaging and safe experience for patients that also advances outcomes!?

Without addressing these questions and building a system architecture around them, you can find yourself chasing your tail.

Here is the basic set of questions we started with at Sentur that helped us develop a model architecture that we believe will maximize continuous learning and refinement:

• How do you train a model on a specific therapeutic modality. As we discussed earlier, this includes understanding the structure of that modality, its flow, its terminology and many of the expert 'mini-flows' that when put together creates a holistic view of the approach.?Training on conversations is one thing, training the model to understand the structure, states, transitions and outcomes is a different ballgame.
• How do you train it on a journey and a path that can drive a patient forward.
• How do you identify where clients are on that journey?
• How do you ensure the safety of everything you are putting in patients’ hands?
• Last but not least, integrations of modalities: There is NO one-size-fits-all when it comes to building a therapeutic journey for a patient. An expert therapist might use several modalities to deliver outcomes for a patient. How do you teach models to integrate all of these modalities??

The architecture that you decide on must integrate the ability to address these questions but also efficiently allow you to improve, enrich and expand each one of them. (i.e. how to add a modality that is emerging, how to expand the journey with new states, how to add more behavioral topics to address...etc.)

At Sentur we are on a mission to generate vast social change by revolutionizing mental health care through the comprehensive treatment of trauma. We invite you to be a part of this transformative journey. Subscribe to this newsletter / follow me or the Sentur LinkedIn page.