To Bot Or Not

Earlier this month, I read the Wired article, The Problem With Mental Health Bots and was left with one impression: We really don't know if chatbots work for treating mental health conditions (see Effectiveness And Safety Of Using Chatbots To Improve Mental Health: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis).

But I thought of bots in a new light this week when I read some of the new data on loneliness. A few years ago, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote about the “epidemic of loneliness" in his book Together. And that epidemic is increasing with a recent study . . .