The Interplay of Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Psychology

Breather
Jun 12, 2020
5 min read

Automation represents a broad progression in technology, initially designed to take the load of monotonous and repetitive tasks and consequently, enable us to boost our creative productivity. Sounds like a boon for us, right? It certainly (and theoretically) should leave us with a lot more space to engage in focused thinking to take forward academic, research, technological and capitalist advancements.

However, the word 'automation' does not generate a sense of comfort in most of us, but distrust and fear. The primary reason for this is the fear of being rendered 'not useful' if technology dominates human capabilities. And I do find this argument logical, as overtime, technology is demonstrating its capacity to predict and replicate human behaviour with more efficiency.

The waves of technology, artificial intelligence and automation are expected to be bigger and faster than the Industrial Revolution, so we better brace ourselves for automation to impact us collectively. A study by McKinsey Global Institute (December 2017) estimates that by 2030, approximately 800 million jobs could be lost worldwide to automation. According to Forrester’s report (July 2016), automation will replace 16% jobs by 2025, with an offset of 9% new jobs created in areas such as curation of content, data science, and management of robots and automation.

What is Automation?

To put it simply, automation is a technology that takes over processes involved in the creation and delivery of various goods and services. It is a useful tool in the diverse areas from something as intricate as hiring a person for a job, to something as basic as making your coffee in a coffee machine.

Remember, there was a time when you had to call a restaurant to place an order and

have it delivered to your house and you would struggle to find change to pay the delivery person? Now, all you have to do is go the right app, place your order, pay at the touch of a few more buttons and have it delivered to your doorstep. The reduced human interaction sounds like a dream for an introvert.

The Need for Mental Health Professionals to Gear Up

Uncertainty about the future can make even the best of us uneasy. The current situation of battling COVID 19 and the collateral concerns that it brings with it has made us more susceptible to mental health concerns. In addition to the economic crisis predicted as a result of COVID 19, automation prepares to take over millions of jobs, several people are likely to feel threatened by this new change, leading to a lot of stress due to the fear of unemployment.

With the increased use of AI technologies in social media applications, the average digital media usage is also increasing drastically (eMarketer, 2017). Studies have shown that people who spend a lot of time alone using technology lack communication skills, self-awareness and emotional intelligence (Schofield, 2009). The digital lifestyle has also made it difficult for us to stay focused, with the average human attention span going from 12 seconds to 8 seconds (Microsoft Attention Spans, 2015).

High-speed internet access is making us lose up to 25 minutes of sleep per night compared to those without high-speed internet (Billari et al., 2018). If you didn’t know this already, sleep deprivation makes us even more susceptible to mental health issues, such as stress and anxiety. This alarming rise in mental illnesses has led to an increase in the need for psychologists and psychiatrists.

Automation in the Fied of Psychology

Experts argue that while a machine can take on several human jobs, it can’t replace the human mind and, therefore, can’t function in roles that involve complex human interactions and creativity. While technology can take on tasks that follow a set structure or pattern and do it better and faster than humans, there are many jobs that technology won’t be able to do so well at.

Therapy requires a human connection. It is the innate nature of the job. It takes a human to understand the unpredictable emotions coursing through another human mind, to spot signs of distress, to interpret what someone says versus what they actually mean. Automation works on logic and consistent patterns, while the human mind is highly irrational, unpredictable and difficult to comprehend by technology.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are used to dealing with many unique situations on a daily basis. Most psychologists are genuinely empathic people who extend their empathy to every client without prejudice and judgement. An efficient psychologist has the ability to gauge a client well and respond with a solution best suited to the client’s personality. While AI may be able to gauge emotions such as anger or sadness; men and women of different ages, different personalities and different contexts might need different, tailor-made approaches to therapy, which artificial intelligence or automation may not be able to provide. When a situation demands one to act in a way different from the usual, machines may not be as efficient as humans in altering their responses depending on the changing situations.

With the rapid evolution of technology, artificial intelligence is learning from patterns and using reinforcement learning mechanisms, but still fails to adapt to the human mind the way a counsellor would. For example, in less than a day after Microsoft’s artificial intelligence bot ‘Tay.ai’ joined Twitter, it was taken down for making sexual and racial comments (2016). This ‘learned’ racism was also demonstrated in a study wherein 34% more errors were made with dark-skinned females than light-skinned males, in deciding their gender (2018).

Artificial intelligence follows an algorithmic and rational approach to problem-solving. Since human emotions are guided by inexplicable feelings, artificial intelligence may not be able to help a person going through extreme emotional distress feel at ease. Emotionally intelligent machines and devices are using behavioural techniques to address mental health concerns; for example, there’s an artificial intelligence called Karim that’s helping Syrian refugees overcome trauma. Such devices can provide guidance and be useful in areas with a lack of mental health provision, but they cannot address ethical issues or sensitive cases such as suicidal ideations. Additionally, mimicking the human touch in a therapy session by a robot seems like a long shot, despite the current developments.

What Does the Future Hold?

It is true that technology is making our lives easy and even replacing human skills in certain areas, but it still has a long way to go in understanding and resolving complex human emotions. It still takes one human mind to understand another, and technology needs to be able to find a ‘method to the madness’ to be able to comprehend the irrational and unpredictable workings of the human mind.