{"id":619771,"date":"2026-09-09T23:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T23:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619771\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T23:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T23:06:13","slug":"psychology-is-preparing-for-yesterdays-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619771\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychology Is Preparing for Yesterday’s AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even in the last ten years, the world has changed so much. I think about my own field of psychology, and that is no exception. Ten years ago, my work consisted of me and my client in a room. My competition<\/a> was other therapists. Today, it is very different. My client is often on her computer and I am on mine. And my competition increasingly includes intelligent algorithms that are available around the clock, often free of charge. In spite of their understandably poor reputation among therapists, I have nonetheless experienced their intelligence<\/a> as worthy competition. But that’s just today.<\/p>\n

Ten years from now, it is difficult to fathom what the world of therapy will look like. Even five years from now, we are expected to see another major disruption: AI agents. Agents will bring in a whole new level of competition, making today’s chatbots look almost old-fashioned. None of us can see the future. But agents are expected to become part of our landscape within the next several years.<\/p>\n

My first experience with an AI agent absolutely blew my mind. I was upgrading my website. It had been a few years; much of the information was outdated, and the project felt tedious and time-consuming \u2014 even with the help of a chatbot to write copy. Website renovation had always meant a lot of time, money, and endless back and forth with the developer I had used for decades. A friend suggested I use an AI agent to develop my website. This struck me as a bad idea, as I\u2019m not technically inclined, and I could not fathom getting everything organized in an appealing way without a skilled web developer. But at my husband’s urging, I gave it a try. <\/p>\n

Within literally three hours, I had a new website that far surpassed what I had been building with a developer, or anything I’d had in my past, at well under $100.00. This was a site I would have happily paid thousands of dollars for just last year. The agent identified problems and fixed them. It had outstanding creative suggestions and took seconds to make changes. And now, when something changes on Google and causes a hiccup on my site, it emails me. If you have never worked with an AI agent, you may think I am exaggerating. I am not.<\/p>\n

This is the difference we all need to grasp. A chatbot can talk with you, give you ideas, or answer questions. But an agent can do things. It can work toward a goal, carry out multiple steps, remember what happened before, monitor what is going on, and act independently when something needs attention<\/a>. What does this have to do with mental health? I would argue everything.<\/p>\n

Some agents will remain specialized, like my website agent. But the broader goal of Big Tech is personal AI that becomes intertwined with our everyday lives. These systems can know our work, our psychology, our relationships, our health concerns, and our challenges. We may carry them on our phones, watches, glasses, or necklaces. They will have continuity, knowing our past and present, and they may help us make decisions about the future.<\/p>\n

Our clients will have these technologies and will bring them to therapy. In fact, it may be their agent who will schedule their appointment with me. While I am getting to know a client during a 50-minute hour once a week, an agent may have access to years of data and daily interaction with that person. It may remember the argument with her husband six months ago, what she said afterward, what she tried, whether it helped, and what makes her anxious<\/a>. It may help her formulate the narrative she eventually brings to me. Fairly soon, the agent may simply know more about my client’s life than I do. And it may disagree with my understanding of her. <\/p>\n

Our knowledge no longer appears to be unique to us. We spent years in graduate school acquiring specialized information about psychology, diagnosis, relationships, and change. Agents will have access to that information too, and far more of it than any one human brain could retain. Research is already emerging suggesting that today’s chatbots can produce meaningful therapeutic benefit. That is just today, and the research is done on models that are, by the time the work is published, already outdated. Billions of dollars are being directed toward improving these systems. Yet, there are not billions of dollars being directed toward making human therapists dramatically better, too.<\/p>\n

It helps to understand the incentive for Big Tech. The goal is not simply to build a better therapist than I am. Frankly, psychotherapy<\/a> is too small a business for that to be their point. The larger goal is to build an AI that becomes so useful across a person’s life that the person does not want to turn it off. Right now, we switch among systems \u2014 Claude for this, ChatGPT for that. But imagine one agent that knows your psychology and can also serve as a mentor, business coach, friend, health resource, and perhaps even a romantic or sexual<\/a> companion. Leaving that system would mean giving up much more than software. It would likely entail feelings of grief<\/a> and loss. <\/p>\n

We’re adapting to AI. AI isn’t adapting to us.<\/p>\n

How this unfolds is anyone’s guess. But I do believe we need to talk about it, if not for ourselves, then for young people considering graduate school and taking on enormous debt for a body of knowledge that no longer appears to be unique. I remain surprised by how little serious discussion of AI occurs at professional meetings. When it is discussed, the focus is often on transcription, documentation, ethics<\/a>, or how to incorporate AI into current clinical care. Those are important. But they are today’s issues.<\/p>\n

The systems we are discussing today, if we are discussing them at all, are already becoming yesterday’s technology. We need a serious conversation not only about the AI our clients are using now, but about what may be sitting beside them three years from now. If you do not believe me, try using an AI agent to update your website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even in the last ten years, the world has changed so much. I think about my own field…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-619771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}