MindMentor is a robot developed by two psychologists, and consequently has become one himself!
It resides on a website on the web, and charges $8 per hour of therapy. Can it replace a flesh-and-blood psychologist? Probably not. But it’s a heck of a great alternative. Say hi!
MindMentor asks question about what’s worrying you, why it’s worrying you, and other such questions. While it often does just copy and paste your answer into the next question, it’s actually surprisingly effective: at its start, it was tested on 1600 different people, and 47% found it effective after just one session. Considering how much of that is true for actual psychologists, that’s amazing!
Also, MindMentor has alternate egos with different personalities that ask different sorts of questions. RoboRorschach, who gives projective testing, and ProvoBot, who uses provocative humor are also there to stimulate customers when they need to. It seems silly, but, according to a writer from WIRED, after talking to ProvoBot: ‘I was startled by how wounded I felt.’
So this robot psychologist seems to do the job quite well. It’s ability ends, however, at stress, family problems, and similar issues. It cannot help mental ward patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or other mental diseases. But for $8 an hour, it does do pretty well.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2008/03/mindmentor
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