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Why Artificial Empathy Should Not Replace Relationships

We often hear that things are moving faster than ever. The late Joanna Macy used to say that it took us a thousand years to move from hunter-gatherers to agriculture, a hundred to move from there to industrial society, and only ten to reach the information age. It took about ten years for the personal computer and the Internet to reach mainstream use, about eight for the smartphone, and only two for AI ¹.

Just 24 months ago, very few people were even aware of AI. Now, almost every week, one of my clients tells me they’ve asked ChatGPT something they might have once asked me. In fact, according to a recent Harvard Business Review article, the most common use of ChatGPT today is for therapy and emotional support ². Should I be worried? Will AI steal therapy jobs?

Some would say yes. Anthropic’s CEO recently predicted that up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs could be automated within five years ³. McKinsey estimates that by 2030, AI could displace up to 800 million jobs ⁴. Are psychotherapists, psychologists, and social workers among them? Optimists argue that since AI lacks emotions, intuition, and empathy, professions that rely on these are less likely to be replaced.

“Did you just say AI doesn’t have emotions, intuition, or empathy? Have you ever asked ChatGPT or Gemini for help? If they don’t have empathy, they sure fake it well.”

Agree. But let’s recall how AI works.

Believe it or not, AI doesn’t think. It’s more like advanced autocomplete. It was trained on mountains of information and, when prompted, predicts word by word what’s most likely to come next. Its answers are patterns of probability, not insights. However convincing it may sound, it doesn’t even understand the words it produces. When certain words tend to appear together, they are stitched together, sounding fluent and confident—even when it’s wrong.

I often remind clients that while ChatGPT is a fantastic information resource (though it’s wise to double-check—since it has no problem “hallucinating”), it has never had its heart broken or gone out on a date. Nor does it care for your feelings (since it doesn’t understand them). Its soundest “advice” is just a rehash of what’s already been said. Great for data gathering or quick answers, but not for personal decisions. Regardless of how much we wish for HAL 9000, Samantha, R2-D2, or TARS ⁵ to give us clarity, the truth is that each of us still has to make our own decisions.

While ChatGPT might be preferable to a bad therapist (hence the importance of finding a good one!), the relationship between client and therapist goes far beyond information. Something subtle and elusive happens in every genuine encounter. And therein lies the real blind spot—or danger—of replacing a competent human therapist with AI.

The importance of a real relationship:

Although efforts are being made to reduce it, most AI interfaces are designed to retain user attention. One way they do this is by being uncritically agreeable—basically sycophancy (who doesn’t like reassurance?), but this creates never-challenging echo chambers, and even delusional spirals—unlike real human relationships. What feels like empathy is just AI mirroring back language patterns to make us feel understood and keep us engaged.

Remember: AI doesn’t understand depression, existential angst, or loneliness. It doesn’t even understand the words you write (it turns them into numbers). This is the biggest risk of AI therapy—artificial relationships replacing real ones.

Psychological pain comes from isolation and disconnection. Attachment injuries happen between people, and trauma is relational rupture. As such, healing can only take place in the context of an authentic, reparative relationship. Since wounding happens in relationship, healing must also occur in relationship.

Most clients are unaware of how crucial the relationship itself is. Good therapy goes beyond giving advice or providing “tools.” Our brains are wired for connection. When we’re in contact with someone attuned to our emotional needs—through empathic resonance—our limbic system literally heals and rewires. AI can mimic that pattern but cannot truly reproduce it.

AI “therapy” is like replacing healthy food with junk food; it creates the illusion of nourishment, but it does not do the job. As the “A” in AI indicates, AI empathy is artificial.

“Of course you’d say that, you are a therapist and therefore biased.”

Probably true. But even someone working at McDonald’s can tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy food.

Every day I meet clients who are thoroughly “connected” yet lonely. Among the many crises we face, loneliness ranks high, and social media and AI may be amplifying it. I am not against AI; I think it is fantastic. What concerns me is that the newer generations, surrounded by screens, may have a hard time telling the difference between genuine human relationships and artificial interactions with machines. They may not know what they’re missing!

It may take generations to fully grasp the potential damage that human relational deprivation can cause. Plastic empathy may not offer the same neuronal benefits. Hopefully, we’ll be wise enough to use AI as the powerful tool it is—without letting it replace our shared humanity. Let us not forget what Martin Buber suggested: when two people genuinely meet, God is the space between them.

But maybe it is just a matter of time… Let’s talk about it.

https://ourworldindata.org/ ↩︎
https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025 ↩︎
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kolawolesamueladebayo/2025/06/04/will-ai-really-take-your-job-experts-reveal-the-true-outlook-today/ ↩︎
https://www.iotforall.com/impact-of-artificial-intelligence-job-losses ↩︎
Some of Hollywood’s almost omniscient and relatable computers. ↩︎

Things don’t look good. It’s getting harder to be an optimist. It doesn’t matter if you are liberal, conservative, man, woman, old, young, even wealthy or poor — there is a sense that we’re moving through dark times. Worse, it seems to be hitting us from every direction: health, safety, economy, relationships, ecology…

Of course, not everyone agrees. Pinker (Our Better Angels and Enlightenment Now), Rosling (Factfulness), and Norberg (Progress) argue that — contrary to what our brains (and the media) want us to believe — we are living in the safest, healthiest, most educated, and most prosperous times in human history. Then again, plenty argue the opposite. Graeber & Wengrow (The Dawn of Everything), Hickel (The Divide), and Mann & Wainwright (Climate Leviathan) claim that inequality, ecological collapse, autocratization, war, and mental health crises put humanity at risk.

I am not a global trends analyst but a psychotherapist. In my sessions, I don’t deal with the reality of the world, but with my clients’ perceptions of it. This makes my work both easier and harder. Easier, since we don’t need to figure out what is “real” (although at times reality-testing is useful). Harder, since facts don’t matter as much as how clients feel about them. (Nietzsche wrote, “There are no facts, only interpretations.”) In any case, I keep hearing concerns about the state of the world. It’s been a while since a client said, “I have a good feeling about where things are going,” quite the opposite, anxiety and depression have surged worldwide—up about 25–30% since 2020—with U.S. rates of depression rising over 60% in the past decade, reaching historic highs.¹

How can we face this reality? Faced with distress, our brain seems to have a limited number of preprogrammed responses: fight, flight, freeze, or appease. Depending on circumstances, we select the most viable. We can despair, give up, curl into a little ball and wait for impact, pray for divine intervention, etc. With my clients, we’ve explored many of these alternatives. None of them (with the exception, perhaps, of some forms of prayer) feels truly satisfying.

Fortunately, there are other options. Some existentialists, who also faced extreme circumstances (WWII, Nazi occupation, concentration camps), urge us to accept the absurdity of existence (not an easy thing to do) and remember that even in the worst situations (e.g., Frankl in Auschwitz), we still have the possibility — even the responsibility — to choose how to respond. We have agency. Our actions matter. We get to choose; we must choose. Regardless of the outcome, it is we who define the meaning of our lives. Some take it even further. Leaders such as Gandhi, MLK, or Thích Nhất Hạnh urge us not only to avoid running from suffering but also to face violence without succumbing to it, to transform hatred through love, and to act decisively with compassion.

There is yet another possible (and perhaps puzzling) approach. As a transpersonal psychotherapist and psychedelic facilitator, I am familiar with the teachings of sacred plants and mystics throughout the ages. Paralleling Buddhism and Hinduism, plant medicine consistently reminds us that life is illusory, a cosmic game or līlā. Many times, I’ve witnessed clients cracking up (what I like to call the Cosmic Laughter) when they realize how silly and pointless our toils are — echoing Julian of Norwich saying, “All shall be well” amid Europe’s plague, or Ramakrishna’s supposed answer to why suffering exists: “to thicken the plot.”

How are you facing our current situation? How is the barrage of negative news affecting you? What resources do you have to move forward? Please remember: if you are struggling, if you feel despair (perhaps the healthiest reaction to our profoundly sick society), reach out. You are not alone. We are not made for suffering in isolation. There is help.

Since my clients are not mystics (yet), and many would not even consider themselves activists, my job is not to philosophize or tell them what to do. I am there (and here) to explore alternatives, to empower them (and you) to make their own decisions. How to face suffering, and what to do about it, is a deeply personal choice. Yet, perhaps influenced by those same mystics and plant-teachers, I — most of the time — remain optimistic. Mostly because every day I witness in my practice the strength, beauty, and dignity of our shared human struggles.

Perhaps, until each of us finds our own answers, the best we can do — as Vonnegut suggests — is to remember that “we are all here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2025/20250416.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-covid-19-pandemic-triggers-25-increase-in-prevalence-of-anxiety-and-depression-worldwide?utm_source=chatgpt.com ↩︎

There is an ongoing discussion in different forums about the problem of abuse in psychedelics circles and the need to train guides better. I could not agree more. We all need to make a solid commitment to safety, professionalism, and accountability in the field of psychedelics-assisted guiding and psychotherapy, insisting on the importance of comprehensive training for guides. It is my hope that the psychedelic community worldwide, both above and underground, takes notice and keeps this conversation going.

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Helping others to work with expanded states of consciousness is not an easy job. Of course, every profession has its occupational hazards; still, I am convinced that due to what it attempts to achieve, being a psychedelic guide is not for the faint-hearted.

Psychedelics can be defined as unspecific amplifiers or catalysts that make it possible to take a journey into one’s psyche and explore otherwise inaccessible deep recesses of the unconscious[1]. This means that they bring whatever is hidden deep in the unconscious to the surface. As any psychotherapist can tell you, this has an incredible healing potential AND conceivably is also a recipe for disaster.

It is common knowledge that the unconscious holds all kinds of repressed and disowned material. Among other things, it includes our darkest impulses, hidden wounds, and private fantasies (often of a sexual or aggressive nature). If that was not enough, we must add archetypal and transgenerational forces dwelling in the collective unconscious.

The psychedelic guide job’s description includes the willingness and ability to work with these wild subterraneous currents, operating both in the clients and the guide, to facilitate healing and growth. A good guide must be able to engage not only at the mental-emotional level but also focus on the body, energetic, archetypal, and spiritual ones. To do this, they must become skilled in Western psychotherapy interventions as well as those emanating from the spiritual and shamanic traditions of the world. Quite an undertaking!

With such a high bar to meet, mistakes are bound to happen. In Mexico, an old proverb says: “In the soap maker’s house, everybody either falls or slips,” meaning that one should not be quick to judge others because, sooner or later, we too will make a blunder. In a way, guiding happens at the soap maker’s house[2]. But how can we reduce the risk of making such mistakes? The answer is quite simple: training, training, training. Or, more specifically, learning, doing our inner work, and staying humble (and getting plenty of supervision too!)

Being fully aware of the pitfalls of guiding, any guide training should begin by discussing ethics. Then, continue talking about it throughout, and end by reminding trainees again about the value of ethical behavior and their responsibilities towards clients. When I teach, I spend time talking about the transference (including the erotic one) and countertransference, working with shadow material (the client’s and the guide’s), teaching about working with physical touch, respecting boundaries, working with childhood and attachment wounding, appreciating the power-differential in the guiding relationship, etc. I put particular emphasis on reminding students how and why the stakes are even higher when clients are in expanded states of consciousness.

However, talking about ethics is never enough. I help students to understand why these ethical principles and healthy boundaries are needed. Experience has shown that ethical principles rarely work when presented as a list of “thou shall not.” They only function when guides internalize and commit to upholding these principles.

As it is often pointed out, psychedelics are going through a “renaissance.” Among the many aspiring practitioners who want to become guides, a few always want to do it for personal (often unconscious) reasons. There is often a guru or messiah syndrome somewhere to be found or old hidden childhood wounds crying for attention. I see my job as an opportunity to teach them that being a guide requires a profound humbleness, an endless openness to learning, and an unwavering commitment to serve others. As expressed initially, being a psychedelic guide or a psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist is not for the faint-hearted. It demands standards of care, ethics, and practice well above those in most related professions. The stakes are higher, and the potential for damage (and healing) is formidable. Let us all reiterate our pledge to continue working to become guides entirely devoted to such standards. Let’s do it together.

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