Why A.I. Should Be Afraid of Us

Because benevolent bots are suckers. Plus, racism in medical journals, the sperm-count “crisis” and more in the Friday edition of the Science Times newsletter.

Artificial intelligence is gradually catching up to ours. A.I. algorithms can now consistently beat us at chess, poker and multiplayer video games, generate images of human faces indistinguishable from real ones, write news articles (not this one!) and even love stories, and drive cars better than most teenagers do.

But A.I. isn’t perfect, yet, if Woebot is any indicator. Woebot, as Karen Brown wrote this week in Science Times, is an A.I.-powered smartphone app that aims to provide low-cost counseling, using dialogue to guide users through the basic techniques of cognitive-behavioral therapy. But many psychologists doubt whether an A.I. algorithm can ever express the kind of empathy required to make interpersonal therapy work.

“These apps really shortchange the essential ingredient that — mounds of evidence show — is what helps in therapy, which is the therapeutic relationship,” Linda Michaels, a Chicago-based therapist who is co-chair of the Psychotherapy Action Network, a professional group, told The Times.

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