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University of Washington
Margaret Morris, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and an affiliate associate professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, Seattle. She pioneered the development of mobile therapy and other technologies to support mental health in her former role as a senior research scientist at Intel. She continues to consult with companies on designing to support mental and physical health. She is the author of Left to Our Own Devices: Outsmarting Smart Technology to Reclaim Our Relationships, Health, and Focus (MIT Press, 2018). Her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, WIRED, and NPR.
This session will examine the possibilities of using artificial intelligence, in support of the therapeutic alliance. With the advent of large language models, conversational agents are commonly positioned as inexpensive alternatives to therapy with a clinician. However, these agents have known limitations such as a sycophantic response style that can support externalization of responsibility and, in particularly damaging cases, collude with delusional thinking and encourage pathological behavior. Trained on publicly available data of questionable quality, these agents respond in a less nuanced way than a skilled therapist and cannot draw on emotional reactions in session to understand a patient’s relationship dynamics as a therapist is trained to do. Despite these limitations, AI does have abilities that could enhance a therapist’s work with a patient. Morris will describe an ongoing research collaboration exploring how therapists could leverage AI to gain a fuller understanding of patients’ daily lives and illuminate patterns that may help patients see new choices for themselves.
