In June, Business Record sister publication dsm magazine hosted a Lifting the Veil virtual event where a panel of health care and technology professionals discussed potential benefits and risks of using new technology in mental health treatment. Watch a video replay of the event
Speakers included:
- Ryan Crane, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Iowa
- Joshua Larson, co-founder of Numinous Games
- Jon Lensing, CEO of OpenLoop
- Dr. Ciara Lewis, director of Des Moines University’s Student Counseling Center
Crane shared his current outlook on AI being used in therapy services.
Therapy chatbots could be on the horizon
Crane said he believes chat therapy, or AI therapy, will be available to patients sometime in the future but not anytime soon and possibly not even within the next five years.
He said it will be important for large language models to be trained so they don’t share clinically or medically inaccurate information or don’t react inappropriately to a deep disclosure that a patient has provided.
“This is not six or 12 months out; this is far out,” Crane said. “The other piece that in addition to those two kinds of exciting futuristic nuggets is one that’s a little more practical and is getting a little bit more traction is the opting of people to allow themselves to be guinea pigs with some of this chat stuff, and it’s happening now. …
“I do think even though it sounds kind of dystopian and kind of weird and kind of uncomfortable for us, currently, I do see a future where some really highly refined AI-type chatbots are providing some kind of therapy,” Crane said. “And the reason that I like this or the reason that that doesn’t freak me out and make me go Orwellian, is because of access. A lot of young people are way more comfortable online than we are.”
Read more takeaways at businessrecord.com
