Why you may never have a robot psychiatrist
When the robots come for our jobs — and they’re coming — you’ll be able to talk to your therapist about fears of impending job loss, and ask your psychiatrist about possibly adjusting your medication to meet the enhanced stress of watching the world’s human work force replaced amid the rise of the machines.
How’s that? Experts say mental health professionals will endure as, well, just about every other job on Earth gets swallowed up by robots. “Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals will simply be the last jobs robots can take,” argues tech expert Shelly Palmer in Advertising Age:
Sure, we could do a combination natural language understanding, automatic speech recognition system tied to a competent AI system that would make a fine suicide prevention chatbot. But there’s much more to understanding and treating mental health issues. Again, humans are better equipped to understand other humans. This is not to say that medical professionals won’t leverage AI systems to do a better job, but the ability to create a robot that could take the job of a trusted psychiatrist will be outside of our technical reach until we have functioning WestWorld-style robots. And even then, it will be a reach.
So you may one day be soothed by a “there-there” cooing inflatable robot (or “healthcare provider companion”), and robots are already doing minor surgery, but it’s going to be much more difficult to get CBT or medication management from even the most sophisticated scientific creation.
Is modern day mental health treatment so much more complex than performing surgery on a living person? Well, in a way, yes, says Joanne Pransky, a robotics expert who works with designers to improve the ways humans and robots interact. Pransky — who calls herself the world’s first “robot psychiatrist” — says humans tend to want robots to seem human.
“They want the robot to show anger and excitement and happiness and sadness,” Pransky told Tech Republic:
With developments in voice technology and humanoid robotics rapidly advancing, the need for robot psychiatrists may not be such a far-out idea. Today, Pransky sees her main role as “helping humans pave the way for their interactions with robotic technology.” Still she added, “I like to think that a robot psychiatrist will be called for in the next ten years.”
Look, can a robot call in my refill at least? Will the robot take my insurance? If so, I’m willing to give it a shot.
