{"id":644,"date":"2025-05-05T09:43:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T13:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=644"},"modified":"2025-05-05T09:43:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T13:43:58","slug":"middle-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=644","title":{"rendered":"Middle Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting in a small, over-bright seminar room on the sixth floor of Western\u2019s Social Sciences complex with five classmates, I bit the side of my index finger to hold focus. The topic \u2014 actuarial versus clinical approaches to assessment<\/i> \u2014 may not sound compelling or prescient, but. . . Harvey, Dr. Doug\u2019s teaching assistant was making a strong, if not riveting case for the former. It was the early \u201970\u2019s and computers were still finding their footing in the hallowed halls of learning. AI<\/i><\/b>. . . well, just a sci-fi concept (or a steak sauce, if you\u2019re a secretary of education). Hal (H<\/i><\/b>euristically programmed Al<\/i><\/b>gorithmic computer) had barely had time to go rogue and over-ride Dave\u2019s request to \u2018open the pod door\u2019 \u2014 all in aid of protecting itself from human meddling. And we six were a hard sell for Harvey\u2019s pitch favouring factor analysis over human instinct and intuition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fast forward a half-century (OMG, has it really been that long!) Hal may have been sold for parts, Orange (Agent, Clockwork, or otherwise) has replaced Hal\u2019s penetrating red eye with less than penetrating red hats, and the humourless, automated, monotonic (some would say, moronic) voice now issues assaultingly from a guy obsessed with the red planet and bad math. But it seems the arm wrestle between the human and the machine carries on.<\/p>\n

I have to fess up \u2014 I use tests! Paper and pencil, increasingly digitally administered measures of personality, interest, intelligence, aptitude. Rorschachs, projectives \u2014 not so much. Fun at a party, but, well, a bit too close to tea leaves and phrenology for my taste. Still there\u2019s nothing like a good, big pile of psychometric data to flesh out a report and lend a little gravitas to one\u2019s \u2018clinical impression\u2019. (Dr. Doug would be rolling over at the mere mention of something as ephemeral as \u2018an impression\u2019!) And while we\u2019re in confession mode, report writing is a whole lot less onerous with machine scored results and oft-used (dare I say \u2018canned\u2019) boiler plate phraseology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter AI. Slipping in noiselessly on little cat feet, summarizing sessions, prepping proposed overviews of appointments, \u2018freeing\u2019 practitioners to concentrate on the client (vs. finding a pen that writes), and obviating the cognitive log jam as the therapist struggles to remember what was talked about \u2014 an hour (or a day, or heaven forfend, a week) later. All with the disclaimer, of course, that \u2018AI-generated content may be inaccurate or misleading. Always check for accuracy.\u2019 Even AI has to enlist a little CYA\u2019ing. Nevertheless with comforting monikers attached: \u2018companion\u2019, \u2018assistant\u2019, . .<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Abby (or Happi or even Eliza \u2014 for folks with one or both feet in the past) \u2018in your pocket\u2019 and available 24\/7 (as the pitch goes), empathic, attentive, supportive (and cheaper!) than those pesky humans. Who wouldn\u2019t opt for the relentless positivity of a less paranoid and clearly more benign Hal!<\/p>\n

Finding a best way forward, whether it be in medicine, psychology, truck-driving, or widget manufacturing is presenting as the ethical dilemma. I read an interesting piece in the New Yorker today paralleling the late eighteenth century struggles in the UK textile industry with today\u2019s AI \u2018revolution\u2019. In a few short decades, an artisanal population was displaced and decimated by automation and machinery. In its wisdom, the government of the time (an 1800\u2019s equivalent of today\u2019s billionaires boys club) saw fit to criminalize the \u2018old ways\u2019 (Frame Breaking Act, 1812), making open resistance to the more profitable \u2018industrialized options\u2019 a capital offence. This in favour of finding a sustainable middle ground. One where both the capitalist and the craftsman may coexist, the latter benefiting from innovation; the former incorporating the latter\u2019s wisdom, experience, and skill. I have no wish to sacrifice, to remove from my practice all the benefits that have evolved over the past 50 years. Neither do I want to hang all the mental health practitioners who continue to bring their distinctly human expertise to the table.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sitting in a small, over-bright seminar room on the sixth floor of Western\u2019s Social Sciences complex with five classmates, I bit the side of my index finger to hold focus. The topic \u2014 actuarial versus clinical approaches to assessment \u2014 may not sound compelling or prescient, but. . . Harvey, Dr. Doug\u2019s teaching assistant was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}