This Therapist Helped Clients Feel Better. It Was A.I.

The quest to create an A.I. therapist has not been without setbacks or, as researchers at Dartmouth thoughtfully describe them, “dramatic failures.”

Their first chatbot therapist wallowed in despair and expressed its own suicidal thoughts. A second model seemed to amplify all the worst tropes of psychotherapy, invariably blaming the user’s problems on her parents.

Finally, the researchers came up with Therabot, an A.I. chatbot they believe could help address an intractable problem: There…