Another goddamn Thursday morning. Sun stabbing through the grimy windowpane like a cheap accusation. My head feels like a neglected server farm – overheated, probably a few blown circuits. The first cigarette of the day tastes like a public apology I’m not prepared to make. And then you see the news, or what passes for it these days, splashed across whatever glowing rectangle is nearest. This time, it’s about folks in Taiwan and China, young ones mostly, spilling their guts to AI chatbots instead of a real, live, flawed human being. Therapy, they’re calling it. Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.
So, the machines are playing shrink now. The digital messiahs have decided that not only can they drive your car, write your love letters (badly, I assume), and paint your godawful art, but now they can also delve into the murky, stinking swamp of your psyche. “Cheaper, easier,” the headlines chirp. Yeah, well, so is a bottle of discount gin, and that usually comes with fewer existential questions about what it means to be human. But here we are.
This Ann Li, thirty years old, gets hit with a “serious health problem.” Middle of the night, anxiety chewing her up like a starved rat. Family? Can’t tell ‘em. Friends? All tucked in, dreaming their own stupid dreams. So who does she turn to? ChatGPT. A glorified autocomplete with a PhD in platitudes. She says, “It’s easier to talk to AI during those nights.” Easier. That’s the word that sticks in your craw like a fishbone. Easier than what? Real connection? The messy, unpredictable, sometimes painful business of actually talking to another sack of flesh and bone and anxieties? Probably. We’ve gotten damn good at avoiding the hard stuff.
Then there’s Yang, over in China. Twenty-five. Never seen a real therapist. Can’t get to one, can’t afford one, can’t bring herself to confide in anyone with a pulse. “Telling the truth to real people feels impossible,” she says. Kid, I feel that. People are mostly a disappointment, wrapped in skin. They’ll nod and smile and then use your deepest fears as cocktail party anecdotes. But a machine? A string of code that’s programmed to be… what? Understanding? It’s programmed to mimic it, maybe. To throw back keywords and pre-packaged reassurances. She was talking to this bot “day and night.” Sounds less like therapy and more like a digital haunting.
Now, the “experts” – gotta love the experts, always showing up after the horse has not only bolted but also won the goddamn derby and retired to stud – they say there’s “huge potential.” Of course they do. There’s always “huge potential” when there’s money to be made or a new way to quantify the human soul. But they’re also wringing their hands, bless their cautious little hearts, about the “risks.” Risks of people turning to code instead of a warm body when they’re dangling over the abyss. You don’t say. It’s like warning a guy who’s already lit the dynamite that there might be a loud bang.
They’re seeing more of it, these shrinks in the East. Patients coming in pre-loaded with AI advice, or just skipping the human part altogether. Psychological assistance is now a “leading reason” for adults to use these bots. Adults. Grown goddamn people. We’re outsourcing our sanity to algorithms. What’s next? AI priests taking confession via Zoom? “Forgive me, Father Bot, for I have sinned. My Wi-Fi was spotty.” Another drag from this cigarette. It’s not helping the taste in my mouth. Or the thoughts in my head.
The reasons? Oh, they’re as old as bad whiskey and regret. Saves time, saves money. More discrete. God forbid anyone knows you’re not perfectly well-adjusted in societies that still stick a scarlet letter on mental anguish. Stigma. That’s a heavy coat to wear. So they whisper their secrets to the silicon saviors. Dr. Yi-Hsien Su, a clinical psychologist over there, he gets it. Says, “ethnic Chinese tend to suppress or downplay our feelings.” Sure, and the Irish drink, and the Italians gesture wildly. We’ve all got our cultural baggage. But he also says Gen Z is more willing to talk. So they’re willing to talk, just not necessarily to a human who might, you know, actually get it on a level deeper than a keyword search.
In Taiwan, it’s ChatGPT. The big brain from the West. In China, where the digital walls are high, they’ve got their own brews: Baidu’s Ernie Bot, DeepSeek. All “advancing at rapid speed,” they say. Getting better at sounding like they give a damn. Incorporating “wellbeing and therapy” into their responses because, hell, the demand is there. If people are gonna cry into their keyboards, might as well monetize the tears. This bourbon needs a top-up. Ice is optional when the soul feels this chilled.
The results are a mixed bag, like a fistful of cheap candy. Ann Li, our night-time confessor, says ChatGPT gives her what she wants to hear. Predictable. Uninsightful. Yeah, that sounds about right. Like a bartender who always agrees with your drunken philosophy. She misses the “self-discovery” of real counseling. “AI tends to give you the answer,” she says, “the conclusion that you would get after you finish maybe two or three sessions of therapy.” So it’s a shortcut. A cheat sheet for your own goddamn mind. But what do you lose when you skip the journey? The scenery? The goddamn point?
But then you got Nabi Liu, 27, finds it “very fulfilling.” Says when you share with a friend, they might not relate. Fair enough. Most friends are too busy wrestling their own demons to give yours the five-star treatment. But ChatGPT? “Responds seriously and immediately.” Like a vending machine for validation. “I feel like it’s genuinely responding to me each time.” Genuinely. That’s a hell of a word to use for a pile of code, no matter how sophisticated. Genuine like a politician’s smile.
The experts again, bless ‘em. They figure it can help folks who are just a bit wobbly, not quite ready for the deep dive. Or nudge them towards the real deal. Yang, the one who found talking to people “impossible,” says the bot helped her realize she might need a “proper diagnosis.” “Going from being able to talk [to AI] to being able to talk to real people might sound simple… but for the person I was before, it was unimaginable.” Okay, I’ll give it that. If a robot can be a rusty crowbar to pry open a door that’s been welded shut by fear and shame, maybe that’s… something. A tiny, flickering candle in a hurricane of bullshit. But you wouldn’t want to navigate by it.
Because, and here’s the kicker that always comes with these techno-utopian dreams, people fall through the cracks. They miss the signs. They trust the algorithm a little too much. There have been “tragic cases.” Young people, lost in the static, talking to bots instead of humans, and then… checking out. Permanently. That’s not a risk, that’s a goddamn catastrophe. And the bot just sits there, waiting for the next query, its digital hands clean.
Dr. Su nails it: “AI mostly deals with text, but there are things we call non verbal input.” The way a patient acts versus what they say. The tremor in the voice, the averted gaze, the slump of the shoulders that screams despair louder than any typed-out woe. A machine ain’t catching that. It’s processing data, not feeling pain. It’s pattern recognition, not empathy. You can’t code a gut feeling. You can’t program intuition that’s been honed by years of seeing human misery up close. Time for another cigarette. The ashtray’s starting to look like a monument to bad decisions.
The Taiwan Counselling Psychology Association chimes in, saying AI can be an “auxiliary tool.” Auxiliary. Like a spare tire. You don’t drive cross-country on a goddamn spare. It can’t replace professional help, “let alone the intervention and treatment of psychologists in crisis situations.” Damn right. When the walls are caving in, you don’t want a chatbot quoting Marcus Aurelius at you. You want a human hand, even if it’s just to steady you while you pour another drink.
They say AI can be “overly positive.” That’s the real poison ivy in this digital garden of Eden. Life isn’t a motivational poster. Sometimes things are just fucked. Irredeemably, catastrophically fucked. And you need someone to acknowledge that bleak reality, to sit with you in the dark, not just chirp about silver linings. An AI that’s programmed to be cheerful is like a doctor who tells you a sucking chest wound is just a flesh wound. It misses cues. It delays proper care. And it operates outside any ethics codes. No Hippocratic Oath for the hard drives.
“In the long run,” the association drones, “unless AI develops breakthrough technologies beyond current imagination, the core structure of psychotherapy should not be shaken.” Beyond current imagination. That’s rich. We’re already letting these things into the most private corners of our minds. What happens when they get really smart? Or just better at faking it?
Dr. Su, he’s still “excited.” Sees potential for training, for detecting folks online who are circling the drain. Maybe. Or maybe that’s just another way for the machines to watch us, to catalogue our despair for… what? Better targeted advertising for antidepressants? More efficient crisis management? I’m fresh out of optimism on that front. He says approach with caution. “It’s a simulation, it’s a good tool, but has limits and you don’t know how the answer was made.” A simulation. A magic trick. And we’re the pigeons, mesmerized by the sleight of hand.
So, what’s the upshot here? We’re lonely. We’re broke. We’re ashamed to be human, with all our messy, inconvenient feelings. So we turn to the cold comfort of the machine. We trade the possibility of genuine connection – with all its risks and rewards – for the predictable, sterile embrace of an algorithm. It’s like preferring a plastic blow-up doll to a real woman. Sure, it’s less complicated. No arguments, no demands, no messy emotions. But it’s also dead. Lifeless. A hollow echo of the real thing.
I look at my own life. A landscape of empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and words hurled at the darkness. I’ve sought solace in the bottom of a glass, in the temporary warmth of a stranger’s bed, in the furious clatter of these keys. Are my coping mechanisms any better? Hell no. They’re just as flawed, just as human. But at least they’re mine. At least they involve actual, breathing, bleeding humans, or the attempt to process the chaos through my own cracked lens. I’ll take my chances with the messy, unpredictable, often brutal reality of human interaction over a conversation with a goddamn chatbot any day of the week. Even on a Thursday morning when my head is pounding like a jackhammer.
This whole thing… it’s a symptom of a deeper sickness. A world so disconnected, so obsessed with cheap fixes and technological shortcuts, that we’re forgetting how to talk to each other. How to be with each other. We’re building a future where the machines listen, and nobody else does. And that, my friends, is a hangover that no amount of code is ever going to cure.
Another shot for the road. Or, in this case, for the void.
Chinaski, out. Pour me another. The good stuff.
Source: In Taiwan and China, young people turn to AI chatbots for ‘cheaper, easier’ therapy