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Abstract

The thesis of this editorial is twofold. First, counselors should work with Artificial Intelligence (AI), and AI should work with counseling. Second, counselors should increase their involvement with, essentially, all things AI. Counseling should forge a path forward with artificial intelligence. This editorial is a bit premature for pragmatists. Where is artificial intelligence (AI) in mental health? The answer is seemingly a paradox, everywhere yet nowhere. Everywhere, through AI subfields like machine learning, natural language processing applications, chatbots, and the myriad ways that large language models find correlations in data hidden from the human eye. Also, AI is nowhere to be found in the human-to-human act of active listening and showing compassion. To begin, let’s define AI. I prefer the straightforward definition of AI being the ability of non-human (read: synthetic, computer) entities to solve problems (Fulmer, 2019) or, perhaps we could say, complex problems (Tegmark, 2018). Without getting into never-ending discussions about what intelligence is, this definition allows us to address AI more practically. Therefore, something (non-human) is artificially intelligent to the extent to which it can solve problems. Consider some of the many problems in mental health – the question of correct taxonomies, proper diagnosis, the best treatment plan, access to care, and you have an idea about how AI can be applied to our field

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