Teaming with Artificial Intelligence to Learn and Sustain Psychotherapy Delivery Skills: Workplace, Ethical, and Research Implications

The shortage of psychotherapists is anticipated to escalate over the next few decades, necessitating interdisciplinary responses to create scalable solutions to meet workforce demands. This paper explores the potential of teaming with artificial intelligence (AI) to upskill current and future psychotherapists. Specifically, we discuss the benefits of AI teaming in augmenting human clinicians’ capacity to learn empirically supported treatments (ESTs), thus improving accessibility to the best available treatments. We argue that integrating AI as a teammate rather than a tool can facilitate the ethical and effective technology integration. While AI interfaces may create the illusion of teamwork between humans and synthetic agents, we also suggest that an “AI teammate” not be endowed with a human teammate’s capacities to be held personally accountable and understand the roles and responsibilities of other teammates. We highlight the necessity of addressing workforce implications, such as changes in collaborative dynamics and competency requirements. Ethical considerations, including transparency, fairness, and privacy, must also guide the integration of AI into mental health work to prevent unintended biases and ensure responsible use. Additionally, we discuss research implications, emphasizing the need to move beyond understanding how psychotherapists interact with AI to how they will collaborate with it. Finally, we outline technological innovations needed for successful AI teaming, including personalized feedback, usability, and bidirectional communication structures. Teaming with AI has the potential to transform the mental health workforce, but collaboration across stakeholders and adherence to ethical principles are essential for successful integration.