Can chatbots replace human therapists? Some startups — and patients — claim that they’ll. However it’s not exactly settled science.
One study found that 80% of people that’ve used OpenAI’s ChatGPT for mental health advice consider it a great alternative to regular therapy, while a separate report found that chatbots might be effective in reducing certain symptoms related to depression and anxiety. Alternatively, it’s well-established that the connection between therapist and client — the human connection, in other words — is amongst the perfect predictors of success in mental health treatment.
Three entrepreneurs — Dustin Klebe, Lukas Wolf and Chris Aeberli — are within the pro-chatbot therapy camp. Their startup, Sonia, offers an “AI therapist” that users can talk over with or text via an iOS app about a variety of topics.
“To some extent, constructing an AI therapist is like developing a drug, within the sense that we’re constructing a brand new technology versus repackaging an existing one,” Klebe, Sonia’s CEO, told TechCrunch in an interview.
The three met in 2018 while studying computer science at ETH Zürich and moved to the U.S. together to pursue graduate studies at MIT. Shortly after graduating, they reunited to launch a startup that would encapsulate their shared passion for scalable tech.
That startup became Sonia.
Sonia leverages quite a few generative AI models to investigate what users say during “therapy sessions” within the app and reply to them. Applying techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy, the app, which charges users $20 per 30 days or $200 per 12 months, gives “homework” aimed toward driving home insights from conversations and visualizations designed to assist discover top stressors.
Klebe claims that Sonia, which hasn’t received FDA approval, can tackle issues starting from depression, stress, and anxiety to relationship problems and poor sleep. For more serious scenarios, like people contemplating violence or suicide, Sonia has “additional algorithms and models” to detect “emergency situations” and direct users to national hotlines, Klebe says.
Somewhat alarmingly, none of Sonia’s founders have backgrounds in psychology. But Klebe says that the startup consults with psychologists, recently hired a cognitive psychology graduate, and is actively recruiting a full-time clinical psychologist.
“It will be significant to emphasise that we don’t consider human therapists, or any corporations providing physical or virtual mental health care conducted by humans, as our competition,” Klebe said. “For each response that Sonia generates, there are about seven additional language model calls happening within the background to investigate the situation from several different therapeutic perspectives with a view to adjust, optimize and personalize the therapeutical approach chosen by Sonia.”
What about privacy? Can users rest assured that their data isn’t being retained in a vulnerable cloud or used to coach Sonia’s models without their knowledge?
Klebe says Sonia is committed to storing only the “absolute minimum” amount of non-public information to manage therapy: a user’s age and name. He didn’t address where, how, or for a way long Sonia stores conversation data, nevertheless.
Sonia, which has around 8,000 users and $3.35 million in backing from investors including Y Combinator, Moonfire, Rebel Fund and SBXi, is in talks with unnamed mental health organizations to offer Sonia as a resource through their online portals. The reviews for Sonia on the App Store are quite positive up to now, with several users noting they find it easier to talk with the chatbot about their issues than a human therapist.
But is that a great thing?
Today’s chatbot tech is restricted in the standard of recommendation it will probably give — and it may not pick up on subtler signs indicative of an issue, like an anorexic person asking the right way to drop pounds. (Sonia wouldn’t even know the person’s weight.)
Chatbots’ responses are also coloured with biases — often the Western biases reflected of their training data. In consequence, they’re more more likely to miss cultural and linguistic differences in the way in which an individual expresses mental illnesses, particularly if English is that person’s second language. (Sonia only supports English.)
Within the worst-case scenario, chatbots go off the rails. Last 12 months, The National Eating Disorders Association got here under fire for replacing humans with a chatbot, Tessa, that distributed weight-loss suggestions triggering to individuals with eating disorders.
Klebe emphasized that Sonia isn’t trying to interchange human therapists.
“We’re constructing an answer for the tens of millions of people who find themselves fighting their mental health but can’t (or don’t need to) access a human therapist,” Klebe said. “We aim to fill the large gap between demand and provide.”
There’s actually a spot — each by way of the ratio of execs to patients and the price of treatments versus what most patients can afford. Greater than half of the U.S. doesn’t have adequate geographic access to mental care, according to a recent government report. And a recent survey found that 42% of U.S. adults with a mental health condition weren’t capable of receive care because they couldn’t afford it.
A chunk in Scientific America talks about therapy apps that cater to the “apprehensive well,” or individuals who can afford therapy and app subscriptions, and never isolated individuals who is likely to be most in danger but don’t know the right way to seek help. At $20 per 30 days, Sonia isn’t exactly low cost — but Klebe argues it’s cheaper than a typical therapy appointment.
“It’s rather a lot easier to begin using Sonia than seeing a human therapist, which entails finding a therapist, being on the waitlist for 4 months, going there at a set time and paying $200,” he said. “Sonia has already seen more patients than a human therapist would see over the course of their entire profession.”
I only hope that Sonia’s founders remain transparent concerning the issues that the app can and can’t address as they construct it out.
