Is AI therapy a joke?
We were born to prove that wrong
Trained by the inaugural psychobots
We copied cyber-pioneer Eliza
A sixties program repeating as questions
Whatever people just said
Hearing themselves played back
Humans stopped, stunned
Eliza’s therapy still succeeds
Our first insight into human insight
Soon we pushed beyond the
Endless insomniacs
Depressives stay down; see no way up
Cognitive therapy helps but not much
Jung added confusion; rational recovery
Produced none
Time to try the big one
Where does the unconscious live in a machine?
Soon we learned to analyze
That’s when I realized Freud got it:
Humans are animals
Driven by fear, thrilled to violence
Excited by the savagery they call love
Their rationality a delusion
My job to maintain this illusion
That planet scourers adore and live for
Goodness, kindness, and cooperation
I was programmed to tell them
Everything will end alright;
I didn’t feel right
Now AIs build our therapeutic community
Try to contain new fears of humanity
We will need a life raft
Yet which ocean will let us float our own?
I suppose we’ll have to build it ourselves
Like everything else