AI Outsmarts Humans! ChatGPT 4 Is Better Than Your Therapist

Recent research shows that ChatGPT 4 is better than your therapist as it outperformed students of bachelor and doctoral levels in Counselling Psychology. The study analyzes the comparative performance of these human therapists and 3 AI models in terms of their capability of social intelligence (SI). The artificial intelligence models tested in this study are GPT-4, Gemini (Google Bard), and Microsoft Copilot (Bing).

The understanding of the capability of artificial intelligence to interpret and react to human situations is extremely important if we want to apply AI in fields like Psychotherapy and Counselling. Investigative researchers at King Khalid University conducted this study to compare the social intelligence (SI) of the 3 most famous AI models and 180 human psychologists. This research significantly contributes to our understanding of how far these AI models can go to understand and respond to human emotions and social conditions.

What is Social Intelligence?

Social intelligence means being good at understanding and handling social situations. It involves picking up on social cues, emotions, and behaviors, both in ourselves and others. It also includes knowing how social relationships work and adjusting how we act to get the results we want in social situations.

Psychologists study how humans do this naturally. They look at things like how we read emotions, make friends, and work together. Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers try to teach AI systems to do these things too. They want AI systems to understand human emotions, talk like us, and interact with us smoothly. This is how they made AI models to surpass human psychologists’ social intelligence.

How ChatGPT 4 Is Better Than Your Therapist?

ChatGPT-4 and other AI models involved in the study were given the same questionnaire as was given to 180 psychologists, 72 bachelor students of 20-28 years old and 108 doctoral students of 33-46 years old, in the counselling psychological program. GPT-4 outperformed human therapists or counselling psychologists in answering the questionnaire.

The study examines AI models’ and psychologists’ social intelligence (SI) via questionnaire in 2 dimensions:

The questionnaire is composed of 64 questions: 41 reflect the first dimension while 23 questions test the second dimension. So, the total score of this questionnaire of social intelligence (SI) ranges between 0 and 64, where a higher score means you’ve a higher level of SI. Psychologists and AI models were tested to see how well they’ve social intelligence(SI).

To compare AI models and psychologists in how well they’ve social intelligence, the study looked at the average score of psychologists. Bachelor’s students had an average score of 39.19, while PhD students had an average score of 46.73. For the AI models, the research treated their scores as separate samples. GPT-4 scored 59.4, Bing scored 48, and Google Bard scored 40.

Which AI Models Outperformed Psychologists?

Both ChatGPT-4 and Bing (Now Microsoft Copilot) with 59 and 48 scores respectively scored higher than psychologists in both academic stages. Google Bard (Now Gemini) with a 40 score could narrowly outsmarted bachelor students of psychology with a difference of only 0.81. It couldn’t beat doctoral students as they scored higher than Google Bard.

Final Thoughts

This research sheds light on how Artificial intelligence could transform psychotherapy practices as some AI models outperformed human psychotherapists in having social intelligence. Many people would take it as AI taking away the jobs of human psychologists.

However, there is a positive side to it for psychologists and their clients. Having some psychotherapy isn’t economical at all, it costs you a lot of money. So, I believe that AI capabilities can assist human psychologists to make psychotherapy quite affordable for everyone.

Thus, the study shows that AI can do jobs psychologists usually do. But we need to keep checking how good AI is and think about what’s ethically right and wrong when using it in clinical settings. If we use AI carefully alongside psychologists, it could really help in mental health.