Psychology and other “helping professions” such as counselling and social work are often regarded as quintessentially human domains. Unlike workers in manual or routine jobs, psychologists generally see no threat to their career from advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
However, we argue the typical psychologist’s job has four primary components: assessment, formulation, intervention, and evaluation of outcome. Each component can already be automated to some extent.
Much of the work of the helping professional does not require empathy or intuition. Psychology has essentially laid the groundwork for the replication of human practice by a machine.