Why A.I. Is Going to Take Therapists’ Jobs (And How to Keep Yours!)

https://youtu.be/zrhopoWRwpQ

I’m not trying to scare anyone, but it’s important that you know A.I. is taking Therapists’ Jobs, and there’s something it knows how to do better than all of us, which leads people to choose it way more over us. Today let’s talk about what it is, and how we can keep our jobs safe as therapists.

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I’m not just saying this to scare you, but if you’re a therapist in the world we live in today, with the growth of A.I., you might be about to lose your job. And I’m about to tell you exactly why, and exactly what kind of therapists are going to be losing their job.

But first, I want to tell you a really quick story.

I was recently on a trip. I was in Phoenix, Arizona, and I was with a group of people, and we were trying to get from where we were staying, to this place where we were all having dinner. And I pulled out my phone, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to call an Uber.” And they said, “No, no, no, let’s call Waymo.” Waymo is this automated driving service that functions just like Uber, except there’s no human in the car.

So I was like, okay, never done that before. So the person pulls out their phone, they call Waymo. Same exact functionality. You pull it up on your phone, there’s an app for it, and all of a sudden, a car with no human in it pulls up. We get into the car and we drive straight to the location where we were going. My mind was blown.

When we got done with the dinner, we did it again. We get in the car, and there was a super tight parking spot that this car was in. And we got in, and with no driver in the car, the car inches out and goes about their way. We used Waymo the whole time around this trip. And I was blown away. I was like, oh, my God. It’s kind of scary to me to be in a car with no human.

And one of my buddies, who’s a super tech guy, he said, Waymo is statistically better at driving than humans. You’re actually safer in a Waymo car than you are in a taxi cab or in an Uber. And I was. I mean, that just blew me away. I had to research it. And it’s actually true. Statistically, you are safer in a car with no human than you are with a human, because removing human error made it more successful.

So let me use that as an example to explain to you how that is already happening in the field of psychotherapy and in coaching. And there’s a very particular type of therapist. There’s a therapist who practices in a very particular way that should be very concerned, because A.I. has removed human error, and is already better at doing this one thing than humans.

And the scariest part is the general population knows it. And people are using ChatGPT in replacement for therapists and coaches and psychotherapy and all of those things.

And let me tell you who should be concerned. If you are the type of therapist who thinks it’s your job to solve a problem, you should be really concerned, because A.I. is already better at strategizing how to solve problems than you are.

Humans have never really been good at this. I’ve been saying this for years. That’s why I’ve been promoting and talking about Solution Focused Brief Therapy in the way that I have.

So let me give you an example. If you get a referral from a client, right? Let’s say a client calls you and says, hey, I’d like to set up an appointment. My name is John Doe and I’m having a very difficult time sleeping and I need to get that sorted. And you’re like, great. And if you believe that it’s your job to help that client to sleep, you’re going to do that job in a very particular way.

When the client comes to your office, you’re going to come up with strategies and ideas to help them sleep, and you’re going to talk to them about things like get exercise during the day so you can, you know, get yourself tired, or don’t drink caffeine too late in the day, or make sure you don’t have any coffee after 12pm you’re going to come up with, with all, like listening to calming music before you go to sleep.

You’re going to come up with all of these ideas to try to solve the problem of getting to sleep. But here’s the thing, A.I. is already better at that kind of problem solving than you are, and clients know it. So for free, people can log on to services like ChatGPT and say, give me 10 ideas to help me go to sleep better. And they’re gonna get 10 ideas.

And I’m not sure if you know how A.I. works. So AI stands for artificial intelligence, but it’s not actually artificial intelligence, it’s more like artificial internet grabbing, right? So if I ask a question of the internet, like, “Can you give me 10 ideas to help me sleep better?” What they are able to do in nanoseconds is search the internet. Everything that’s ever been published on the internet. Things from medical doctors, psychotherapists, books, research articles, and it collates that information and then gives it out to the person who’s asking.

So the database is so much more vast than what a human can do that it’s just more effective as a problem solving tool than even psychotherapy. So if you think it’s your job, so the client comes in and help them figure out how to sleep better. You’re already losing clients, and as time goes on, you’re eventually going to be out of work because people are going to ChatGPT instead of going to psychotherapy because they don’t have to pay any money to do that. And it’s better at your job than you are.

ChatGPT has removed human error from the problem solving process and thus is better at it than us.

Let me give you another example. One of the most common reasons people have contacted psychotherapists forever is because they have anxiety issues. And if a client calls you and says, I struggle with anxiety, I’d like to set up an appointment. If you believe it’s your job to solve the anxiety, you’re going to come up with strategies to make the client less anxious.

And ChatGPT is already doing a better job at that than you are. And what’s more scary than that is people are going to ChatGPT, to that service instead of calling psychotherapists. This is not something that’s coming. This is not something that’s about to happen. It’s something that is currently happening. And you have to understand that.

So what type of therapist is going to be immune from A.I.? What kind of therapist will thrive in this scenario? I’m going to tell you.

If you understand, it’s not your job to come up with strategies to help that client to sleep. It’s not your job to come up with strategies to make that client less anxious. It’s your job to resolve and heal the issue that is causing the client to not sleep. It’s your job to heal the issue, the underlying issue that is causing the client to be anxious. And healing work is what our actual work is about.

Over the years and I’ve traveled the world, don’t argue with me about this. I’ve taught tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of therapists from all over the world. Most therapists take an eclectic approach to work with their clients to solve a problem. And as a consequence, most therapists are about to go out of business. You have to learn how to do healing work instead of problem solving work.

You have to help the client to heal the issue that is underlying the lack of sleep or the anxiety or the drinking or the anger issue, or the relationship problem. It’s no longer about just the problem, because there’s now a thing that does that better than humans, and the clients know it. And they’re going to ChatGPT. For the first time ever, there’s a free service that does it better than you.

But, you will be immune to this. You will be able to thrive if you can just be humble and acknowledge. Wow. Elliott’s right. I have been doing problem solving work and I need to start learning how to do healing work.

Now, of course I want you to do Solution Focused Brief Therapy. It’s what I believe in. I’ll even be honest with you. I want you to come to my training organization and train to do Solution Focused Brief Therapy because I think we’re the best at teaching it.

But if I’m being very honest, I don’t care where you go to do this, I don’t care what approach you use to do this, because I want you to be successful and I want us to be there and understand that human beings still need to heal. Therapy was never really about the surface level problem. It was always about the underlying issue. But now we have to make that really clear and really overt.

We have to make sure we understand this as a field. We have to teach differently in our universities. As supervisors we have to make sure we’re training and mentoring differently to the people who are new in this field. We have to hold ourselves accountable to understand. It’s not about whether or not I help that client to sleep or not. It’s about whether or not I help the client heal from the issue that caused them to not sleep. And understanding once they heal from the issue that caused them to not sleep, then they will fundamentally and inherently be doing better anyway. That’s the point. The sleep issue will be resolved when you heal the client from the thing that caused the original injury.

A Solution Focused Brief Therapy has a way of doing that. Adlerian therapy has a way of doing that. Strategic family therapy has a way of doing that. Other approaches have ways of doing that. But if you’re just viewing your job as helping the client solve problems, you’re in a lot of trouble. And a year from now, you are very likely going to be out of business.

So I made this video out of love. I don’t mean to scare. I’m not trying to fear monger. I’ve actually been thinking about this for well over a year. A.I. has been going on for a really long time. So I’m not just trying to scare you or I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m not trying to get you worried or concerned or freak you out. It’s because I love what we do and I love the work that we do. And I’m telling you like this is already here. I waited too late to make the video.

I should have made this video a year ago, and I’m sorry, I didn’t. I should have made this video a year ago to tell everybody what was coming. But it is here now. I’m hearing from clients, lots of clients, lots of people, as I travel the world saying, I don’t go to therapy. I asked ChatGPT for some suggestions, help me sleep better. I asked ChatGPT for some suggestions to help me be less anxious. And that’s where I’m going for my therapy.

I even put, you go look at my Instagram. I put a thing on Instagram that said, stop using ChatGPT to replace therapy. And if you read the comments, people actually got mad at me because it’s far more accessible than psychotherapy. It is cheap, and it is on everybody’s device. You can get ChatGPT on your phone now. So, guys, you have to understand, this is here, this is happening.

This is real. And if you don’t accept that, you have to take your work to a new level. It is no longer about how do I help the client solve the problem that they stated. It’s about true, genuine healing work now. You’re gonna be out of business. And the therapists that do true, genuine healing work, those are the therapists are gonna thrive in the world that we now live in. And as that world even advances further.

I was talking to my camera person. He’s literally holding the camera right now. And I was talking to him about, like, man, I should have made this video before. And here’s the video I was thinking about making. And he told me, he said, yeah, Elliot, I was on ChatGPT asking questions. It doesn’t even sound like a computer anymore. It sounds like a person. And I went and played with it like, he’s not wrong. ChatGPT is replacing us.

I’m going to tell you one more quick story. I was in a group. I was with a group. I’m in a mentorship group for business owners. And this one lady was like, I want to show you guys how I’m using ChatGPT or how I’m using A.I. I actually don’t know that it’s ChatGPT. But she was using A.I. and she used A.I. to create a coach to coach her when she’s feeling down. And she asked the coach that she created on A.I. to give herself a name and an image. So she showed us the image and the name. I think the name was like, Esmeralda. And she goes to that A.I. coach to help her deal with her sadness and her frustrations from running her business, she wouldn’t even think of going to psychotherapy anymore.

I’m telling y’all that. So, you know, like, this is really happening. A.I. is a threat to what we do as psychotherapists, as coaches, as psychologists. Like, it’s a threat to what we do because most of us, we take an eclectic approach to try to solve the problem that the client stated. You now have to do real healing work or you’re going to be out of business.
So, again, I’m not trying to scare you. I’m saying this because I love you. I’m saying this because the work that you do and I’m saying because the work that you do matters. And I’m saying this because it’s really important that you understand we’re in a new world now. We’re not about to be in a new world. We are in a new world. And you have to learn how to do true, genuine therapy. Instead of this nonsense about eclectic, I combine this approach with this approach to address the issues that you brought to therapy. That is gone, guys. That is gone. I’ve never believed in that work. But now I’m telling you, A.I. is doing that better than you.

So please share this video, like this video, save this video, because I’m telling you, we’re already in this new world, and you need to know how to do true, genuine healer work.

Thanks for watching. Love you.