紐時賞析／人工智慧治療師「話療」 幫助客戶感覺變好

This Therapist Helped Clients Feel Better. It Was A.I.

人工智慧治療師 話療助客戶感覺變好

The quest to create an artificial intelligence therapist has not been without setbacks, or as researchers at Dartmouth thoughtfully describe them, “dramatic failures.”

打造人工智慧治療師的探索歷程並非一帆風順，正如達特茅斯大學的研究人員經深思熟慮後所說的，過程中曾歷經「戲劇性的失敗」。

Their first chatbot therapist wallowed in despair and expressed its own suicidal thoughts. A second model seemed to amplify all the worst tropes of psychotherapy, invariably blaming the user’s problems on her parents.

他們的首款聊天機器人沉溺於絕望情緒，甚至表達出自殺傾向。第二款模型則過度強化心理治療中的負面刻板印象，幾乎無一例外將使用者的問題歸咎於其父母。

Finally, the researchers came up with Therabot, an AI chatbot they believe could help address an intractable problem: There are too many people who need therapy for anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, and not nearly enough providers.

最終，研究人員研發出名為Therabot的人工智慧聊天機器人，他們相信該系統可望解決一項難題：目前有過多人迫切需要接受焦慮、憂鬱及其他心理健康問題的治療，但可提供專業服務的心理醫療人員卻嚴重不足。

So the team at Dartmouth College embarked on the first clinical trial of a generative AI therapist. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine-AI, were encouraging.

因此，達特茅斯學院研究團隊啟動了首項針對生成式AI治療師的臨床試驗。該研究結果已發表於「新英格蘭醫學期刊——人工智慧」，成果令人鼓舞。

Chatting with Therabot, the team’s AI therapist, for eight weeks meaningfully reduced psychological symptoms among users with depression, anxiety or an eating disorder.

在為期八周實驗中，與團隊開發的AI治療師Therabot互動，有憂鬱症、焦慮症或飲食障礙的參與者，心理症狀均顯著改善。

“The biggest fundamental problem with our system is that there aren’t enough providers,” said Nick Jacobson, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of biomedical data science and psychiatry at Dartmouth.

「我們這個醫療體系最根本的問題在於，專業治療人員數量遠遠不夠，」該研究資深作者、達特茅斯學院生醫數據科學和精神病學副教授雅各森表示。

“We’ve been designing treatments that would fundamentally scale to all people.”

「我們正致力於設計一套治療方式，能真正實現大規模普及。」

During the trial, participants with depression saw a 51% reduction in symptoms after messaging Therabot for several weeks. Many participants who met the criteria for moderate anxiety at the start of the trial saw their anxiety downgraded to “mild,” and some with mild anxiety fell below the clinical threshold for diagnosis.

在此臨床試驗中，患有憂鬱症的受試者在與Therabot訊息互動數周後，症狀平均下降51%。原本符合中度焦慮診斷標準的受試者中，多數症狀降為輕度，部分原本為輕度焦慮者則低於臨床診斷門檻。

Some experts cautioned against reading too much into this data, since the researchers compared Therabot’s effectiveness to a control group who had no mental health treatments during the trial.

部分專家對於這份數據提出審慎觀點，指出研究中所設對照組在試驗期間未接受任何心理治療，因此不宜過度詮釋結果。

The experimental design makes it unclear whether interacting with a nontherapeutic AI model, like ChatGPT, or even distracting themselves with a game of Tetris would produce similar effects in the participants, said Dr. John Torous, director of the digital psychiatry division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who was not involved with the study.

貝斯以色列女執事醫療中心數位精神醫學部門主任、未參與本研究的托洛斯醫師表示，此試驗設計使人難以斷定，若受試者改為與無治療功能的AI模型（如 ChatGPT）互動，或僅以俄羅斯方塊等遊戲分散注意力，是否會產生相似效果。

Jacobson said that he hoped future trials would include a head-to-head comparison against human therapists.

對此雅各森表示，希望未來試驗包含和人類治療師面對面比較。

文／Teddy Rosenbluth　譯／羅方妤