AI therapy isn’t getting better. Therapists are just failing by Jonathan Alpert
/“A growing number of people are turning to AI for therapy not because it’s now smarter than humans, but because too many human therapists stopped doing their jobs. Instead of challenging illusions, telling hard truths and helping build resilience, modern therapy drifted into nods, empty reassurances and endless validation. Into the void stepped chatbots, automating bad therapy practices, sometimes with deadly consequences.
…
In my own practice, I ask hard questions. I press patients to see their role in conflict, to face the discomfort they want to avoid and to build the resilience that growth requires. That approach is not harsh. It is compassion with a purpose: helping people change rather than stay stuck.”
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-09-30/ai-therapy-failing