BONUS: Can AI Actually Be Your Therapist? We Ask the CEO Building One

About this episode

The episode discusses the potential of AI as a therapeutic tool with insights from the CEO of Slingshot AI.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as AI becomes more embedded in our daily lives, one of the biggest questions we face is whether these systems can responsibly support emotional and psychological well-being. AI chatbots are increasingly being used for emotional support, but recent lawsuits faced by OpenAI and earlier ones targeting character.ai and Google's AI Overviews, as well as clinical reports, and internal research have raised valid concerns about their impact on vulnerable users. What does it take to build an AI system specifically designed for mental health from the ground up? Is that even possible? In this LIVE episode of The Neuron Podcast, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey speak with Daniel Reid Cahn, co-founder and CEO of Slingshot AI, about Ash, an AI application purpose-built for therapeutic support. Slingshot has raised $93M from a16z, Radical Ventures, and others to develop a foundation model for psychology trained on structured therapeutic conversations across modalities such as CBT, DBT, and psychodynamic therapy. We discuss the limitations of general-purpose chatbots in mental health contexts, recent controversies surrounding AI and psychiatric risk, and…

People in this episode

Hosts: Corey Noles, Grant Harvey

Guest: Daniel Reid Cahn

Topics covered

• AI in mental health
• therapeutic support
• emotional well-being
• AI chatbots
• mental health care access
• psychological risk

Keywords

• AI therapy
• mental health
• emotional support
• chatbots
• therapeutic engagement
• psychology
• clinical reports

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Slingshot AI, OpenAI, character.ai, Google, a16z, Radical Ventures

Books & works: CBT, DBT, psychodynamic therapy

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