As he sat down across from me, my patient had a rueful expression on his face.
“I had a date,” he announced. “It didn’t go well.”
That wasn’t unusual for this patient. For years, he’d shared tales of romantic hopes dashed. But before I could ask him what went wrong, he continued, “So I asked a chatbot what I should do.”
Um. What? Simulations of human conversation powered by artificial intelligence—chatbots—have been much in the news, but I’d never had a patient tell me they’d actually used one for advice before.
“What did it tell you?” I asked, curious.
