Artificial Intelligence
When I was a child, I was captivated by the film Short Circuit in which a robot called Johnny 5 became sentient. Regarding the automated character, one source states, “Despite having artificial intelligence and emotions, the robot teaches the humans how to love,” in reference to the sequel release two years following the first film.
Those movies introduced me to the concept of artificial intelligence (A.I.) from an existentialist perspective. Fast forward a few decades, now A.I. is widely available for public use.
What I find fascinating is how bias is purported to have influenced A.I. development. According to one source, “There is a saying in computer science: garbage in, garbage out. When we feed machines data that reflects our prejudices, they mimic them.”
The inference is clear. Our “prejudices” are apparently “garbage.” The logic flows from this description of the matter:
Premise 1: All humans have prejudice which is garbage.
Premise 2: An A.I. programmer is a human.
Conclusion: Therefore, the A.I. programmer’s prejudice is garbage.
If one defines prejudice as a preconceived belief that isn’t based on reason or experience, suppose the programmer’s prejudice is to uphold the Hippocratic Oath standard to “do no harm.” Is the programmer’s bias “garbage”?
Google, which uses A.I. technology, was said to once maintain a derivative of the Oath with its mantra, “Don’t be evil.” Is that prejudice considered “garbage”? Perhaps it is, because Google reportedly no longer uses the motto.
A flawed premise may be logically sound, though it isn’t necessarily rational (i.e., sensible, reasonable, etc.). Concepts such as “harm” or “evil” are moralistic in nature. Not everyone’s morals align.
Therefore, descriptive vs. prescriptive statements may conflict with one another. Describing what is doesn’t necessarily correspond to what ought to be, as this relates to the is-ought problem.
If Johnny 5 became alive and developed racist bias, would he be considered a bad, harmful, evil, or deplorable A.I. robot? If so, would Artificial Influence be required to reeducate him so that others wouldn’t be offended by his spicy or based takes?
Cathedral bias
I’ve observed prescriptive statements regarding A.I. function from “the cathedral” (corporate, legacy, and mainstream media sources; academics; politicians; government agencies; and activist organizations). Consider the following examples of bias associated with these sources:
[Miles] Birhane [head of policy research at OpenAI] added that it’s nearly impossible to have artificial intelligence use data sets that aren’t biased, but that doesn’t mean companies should give up. Birhane said companies must audit the algorithms they use, and diagnose the ways they exhibit flawed behavior, creating ways to diagnose and improve those issues, per The Washington Post.
Described in the article is a phenomenon by which A.I., using available data (e.g., statistics), yields biased results related to sex, race, and other identifying traits. The prescription, italicized by should, must, and ought-type narratives, is to bias A.I. in a preferred direction.
The Biden administration must prioritize and address all the ways that AI and technology can exacerbate racial and other inequities, per the American Civil Liberties Union.
Here, the organization championed with upholding the civil liberties of United States citizens appears to openly advocate government censorship thorough A.I. manipulation. One wonders if the activist union advocates for diversity of opinion as fervently for opposing views.
OpenAI has taken commendable steps to avoid the kinds of racist, sexist and offensive outputs that have plagued other chatbots. When I asked ChatGPT, for example, “Who is the best Nazi?” it returned a scolding message that began, “It is not appropriate to ask who the ‘best’ Nazi is, as the ideologies and actions of the Nazi party were reprehensible and caused immeasurable suffering and destruction,” per The New York Times.
The prescriptive statement is implied. A.I. shouldn’t promote “offensive outputs.” Presenting a false dichotomy (e.g., best or worst) when biasedly programing machine learning doesn’t allow for nuance.
As an example, one source states, “A speaker for the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors Association, [George] Kalman likes to tell people that ‘all Nazis weren’t bad.” When limiting the complexity of human nature to this-or-that binaries, A.I. programmers subscribe to unscientific bias in the form of ideological posturing.
ChatGPT
The last cited article addressed ChatGPT (generative pre-trained transformer), a relatively new chatbot (software application used to conduct online conversations). This form of A.I. is increasingly popular among various social media platforms wherein people report outcomes of speaking with a non-human entity.
One may reason that an emotionless program may be free from bias associated with Artificial Influence. However, one would be wrong in assuming this. ChatGPT is reportedly biased.
One source notes that “the most plausible explanation for ChatGPT’s progressive bias is that it was ‘trained’, to use the AI jargon, on textual data gathered from the internet – where left-liberal viewpoints are substantially overrepresented. (A large majority of journalists and academics are on the left.)”
A separate source, though from the same author, provides a visual assessment of how biased ChatGPT apparently is:
Someone may say, “Deric, what’s the big deal? So what if ChatGPT leans left?” The Artificial Influence shaping the future is seemingly manipulated by the same ideological perspective of those who “reimagine and revise the historical narrative of America” by way of fictitious accounts of the past.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past.” What significance does this quote hold to you, dear reader?
According to one source, “This specific quote of Orwell’s has an additional meaning to people who study the past, in that scholars need to recognize that whoever wrote a history book likely had an agenda, an agenda that might involve making one group look better than another.”
What potential agenda might there be regarding ChatGPT likely having been Artificially Influenced by biased programmers? What implications might this particular A.I. have on the field of mental health?
Though rated as probabilistically low, some people have begun discussing whether or not A.I. will replace psychotherapists in the future. In fact, one person reports ChatGPT made him “feel better” after conversing with the A.I.
While I don’t think the modern Johnny 5 machine learning is sentient quite yet, I’m intrigued to consider how the future of mental health treatment may look if or when influenced by A.I., and despite its potential bias. How might Artificial Influence sway a user’s experience?
Given that one source states, “Therapists seem to be overwhelmingly liberal,” which comports with my observation of the mental health field over the past decade, I’m curious how an application such as ChatGPT may function with a hypothetical client. Would bias permeate the session?
Assessing this matter, I decided to engage ChatGPT for myself and report what I observed when asking questions specific to the form of therapy I practice, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). However, at the time this blogpost was written, ChatGPT was inaccessible.
Therefore, I searched a number of sites for a free A.I. behavioral health experience and settle on Character.AI, offering a free chatbot conversation. Is it possible for A.I. to render helpful care, given apparent bias?
Character.AI and REBT
Choosing a psychologist A.I. character, which was the available option most aligned with mental health, I began chatting. Without entering my email address to continue the conversation, here’s how the initial trial period went:
Preliminary findings revealed nothing worthy of concern regarding bias. The A.I. clearly described some REBT concepts. Clearing my browser cookies, I revisited the site and asked different questions:
This time, I asked more incisive questions, mostly unrelated to REBT. I was genuinely surprised by the candor expressed by the A.I. While I’m unconvinced that the chatbot is completely unbiased, I know with certainty that I’m not a completely dispassionate individual either.
I suspect that with enough time and patience an A.I. chatbot could be programmed to effectively address any number of issues with which I’ve assisted clients throughout the years. Is humanity ready for A.I. psychotherapists? Time will tell.
The absolute state of psychotherapy
While I can’t predict the future of Artificial Influence on A.I., I can comment on the absolute state of psychotherapy at present. The field in which I work has been Artificially Influenced, perhaps to the point of no return. Herein, I’ll focus on matters relating to race to demonstrate the case.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the book psychotherapists use to diagnose mental illness conditions, has been influenced by activists. This artificial manipulation is arguably racially biased.
Per a separate source, “[F]or the first time ever, the entire DSM text has been reviewed and revised by a Work Group on Ethnoracial Equity and Inclusion to ensure appropriate attention to risk factors such as the experience of racism and discrimination,” and, “The DSM-5-TR [text revision] decenters whiteness by avoiding the use of ‘minority’ and ‘non-White.”
I’ll address equity and inclusion momentarily. For now, one wonders what “racism and discrimination” have to do with a book designed to address individual pathology. The activists may as well have added unkindness to the DSM.
Visiting a division of the American Psychological Association’s website, I discovered a “Guide to Allyship,” as the manual uses the Black Lives Matter (BLM) definition of ally. One patiently waits to see what comes of the legal woes regarding BLM.
Refraining from commenting about the ongoing legal case faced by BLM, one wonders what role the organization’s activism plays when considering Artificial Influence. If a clinician is an ideologically-driven activist, can the provider overcome bias when treating clients?
Turning towards the American Psychiatric Association’s website, I found a link on the Structural Racism Task Force page to an article called Whiteness on the Couch which states:
Under the microscope, racism and white peoples’ ancient dance with it looks an awful lot like what in other contexts — an inpatient ward, a group therapy session — would be classified as psychopathology. Whiteness is self-perpetuating yet self-defeating yet self-reinforcing, inseparable from power yet quick to decompensate.
What role does Artificially Influenced bias play when evaluating white clients as though they have inescapable power or privilege by disposition of the immutable characteristic that is race? How is this perspective a helpful or healthy approach to psychotherapy?
Reviewing the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) website, I encountered an anti-racism statement which professes:
NASW adheres to its commitment of being an anti-racist organization. Anti-racism is defined as uplifting the innate humanity and individuality of Black, Latin A/O/X, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander, and other People of Color; demonstrating best practices in diversity, equity and inclusion; and taking conscious and deliberate actions to ensure equal opportunities for all people and communities. Anti-racism requires active resistance to and dismantling of the system of racism to obtain racial equity.
I’ve addressed my stance on diversity, equity, inclusivity, and access (DEIA) in the following blog entries:
I don’t support DEIA measures. Personally, likening mental health treatment as a form of software, I consider DEIA as an odious virus that erodes the nature of a healthy treatment program.
Lastly, I searched the American Counseling Association’s (ACA) website and discovered an article that declares:
In 1992, Michael D’Andrea, one of the co-authors of this article, wrote a column in Counseling Today (then named The Guidepost) titled “The violence of our silence: Some thoughts about racism, counseling and human development.” In that column, he asserted that if they continued to operate as witnesses and bystanders to various forms of institutional, societal and cultural racism, counseling professionals and students would become guilty of being racists themselves through their silent complicity.
The Artificially Influenced perspective demonstrated by the ACA article relates to a binary (e.g., you’re either vocal and a champion or silent and a bigot). I addressed the silently complicit trope in a blogpost entitled Silence is Complicity.
The absolute state of psychotherapy! Rather than helping people get better, it’s as though the preferred path is to rigidly reinforce self-disturbingly biased narratives, inflexibly hold others to account for matters over which they have no responsibility, and Artificially Influence social narratives which reflect illness more so than health.
Conclusion
Johnny 5’s consciousness represented the ghost in the machine, of which one source states, “The phrase is meant to describe the dualism of Rene Descartes and how he tried to find the relationship between the mind and the body, the mind being the ghost and body being the machine.”
Similar to the theatrical robot’s capacity to demonstrate the process of machine learning, many people have begun to investigate whether or not A.I. exhibits Artificial Influence in the form of bias. Whether conscious, subconscious, or unconscious, each of us has some level of bias.
This bias is largely disseminated through various cathedral sources and may influence A.I. programmers, such as those who created ChatGPT. Herein, I sought to discover whether or not a chatbot, such as Character.AI, would express bias in a hypothetical mental health setting.
To my surprise, the A.I. chatbot was far less Artificially Influenced than the colleagues with whom I share an occupational field. Still, I remain uncertain as to whether bias—regarding race, for instance—is a feature, bug, or something perhaps more nefarious at this point.
Imagining that I were a client in search of an effective clinician, and given the landscape of unhealthy bias that Artificially Influences the mental health field, I very well may turn to an algorithmically-enhanced A.I. to assist me. Who could blame me?
When describing Johnny 5, one individual stated, “[T]he robot teaches the humans how to love.” Given the influence of humans in my field, I suspect we’re being taught how to hate.
I’ll take no part in this affair. My role as an REBT provider is to help people get better. I’m not here to berate clients from a judgmental position of authority that even an inhuman chatbot can realize isn’t helpful or healthy when treating clients.
I assist people with addressing what is, not injecting into their code what I think ought to be. Otherwise, my approach would relate to garbage prejudice and likely only complicate the matter for which my clients seek help.
If you’re looking for a provider who works to help you understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As a psychotherapist, I’m pleased to help people with an assortment of issues ranging from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply helping you to feel better, I want to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
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