ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY
Artificial Intelligence is gaining prominence and can be called the present and future of everything. The world is moving towards being a world of artificial intelligence. It refers to the simulation of human intelligence into machines to make them think and act like humans.
Psychology, on the other hand, studies the mind and behaviour of humans to understand their conscious and unconscious state of mind. Some time ago, psychology’s association was with humans helping and understanding humans, but, in recent times, the field of psychology too is exploring the realm of Artificial intelligence. The complexities of psychology and high-powered AI has gained force recently.
Psychotherapy helps patients gain control of their emotions and become calmer and composed in dealing with their emotional conflicts. It calls for one-on-one sessions for treatment. With Artificial intelligence coming into the picture and gaining importance with the presence of information technology in life, the introduction of specialized tools not only helps in altering but also accentuating their cognitive understanding. Emotions, creativity, sentiments, reasoning, cognitive ability, in itself is an array of human psychology. The researchers, therefore, have a great deal to cover in this regard.
What should AI’s capability be?
It should be able to identify the problems and provide a sensible and most humane solution. Developing a solution will require an ample amount of research on the mental processes of the human species. Therapeutic work employs techniques to trigger a change. A combination of AI and Psychology will show affective areas, construct genograms, determine the degree of differentiation of self, interaction patterns, and achieve self-awareness. Research in AI has also increasing clinical relevance for therapeutic applications in mental health services. With the innovation of ‘virtual psychotherapists’ to social robots in dementia and autism care, artificial virtual and robotic agents are taking over therapeutic interventions that used to be offered by skilled professionals only.
The domain of Artificial intelligence has been marked with important developments. They highlight limitations in human rationality and show that computers can be creative. A positive outcome can be witnessed for psychologists studying creativity in psychology. A new class of experiments and algorithms can be developed using new data structures and programs.
From an ethical perspective, the benefits of AI applications in mental health include new ways of treatment, engaging more people, better responses, etc. but some of the concerns include a lack of guidance on the development of AI applications, the potential for misuse of the technologies, the need to respect and protect the patient’s autonomy, non-human therapy, and some specific issues are in the long term effects of these applications on the understanding of human condition and psychology.
In conclusion, the use of AI in psychology is a propitious approach and will certainly help in exploring and opening new avenues in the field. However, more research and developments are required to address the existing gaps and bridging them.
Anjali Nair
PGDM A
Vivekanand Business School