Yes, this really was presented to me a few weeks ago by a colleague in the field.
The person presenting the question was not supporting the idea. Rather, they were letting me know that they’ve picked up on this idea as a slowly developing trend.
I’ve been giving it a lot of thought ever since I heard it.
At times my mind would generate a list of bullet points that counter this notion and argue against it.
At other times I’ve used “What is clinical supervision?” as a starting point. And I answer that question with a set of bullet points that are sufficient. And then I ask if internet searches and AI can do those tasks and fulfill that role.
But the latest post from Jason Schwartz put me over the edge and really made me want to present this topic from the field and give a response.
In that post, Jason notes an underlying premise at the heart of addiction counseling: the notion of “Addiction as a unitary entity.” That post of his about addiction as a unitary entity (one thing, to be understood in one same way, regardless of the person’s diagnosed drug class, and regardless of other factors, etc.) showed me something important related to this topic from the field.
What is that “something”? The value of an addiction counselor consciously holding and maintaining the underlying premises of our work.
And his post about the unitary entity aspect of addiction also outlines his detection of that notion as an underlying premise in my latest monograph.
Could an internet search or use of AI accomplish those same results and made that same connection?
I’m not sure.
But even if they did, I doubt they could do other aspects of what a clinical supervisor does in the clinical supervision of counseling.
A grid of that arrangement, the supervision of counseling, is copied from my Clinical Supervision of Clinical Supervision monograph and shown below.
Can an internet search or AI do these supervisory functions across these clinical tasks of the addiction counselor?
I hope it’s clear to the reader after examining the grid above that the combined use of internet searches and artificial intelligence cannot sufficiently replace the knowledge and skill of a clinical supervisor in the clinical supervision of the clinical tasks of the addiction counselor.
For those that are not convinced and think it might be the case that AI and internet searching might be sufficient and could make a qualified clinical supervisor obsolete, I encourage reading two resources.
One is my post titled, Topic from the field: “Should artificial intelligence replace the addiction counselor?”
The reason I encourage reading that material is its discussion of the counselor’s interior. And the interior of the patient.
For example, introspection, transference, and countertransference are discussed both as methods of understanding and as kinds of data. AI does not have the tools to access that material.
Further, one could read that post on AI replacing the counselor and move the patient-counselor relationship up one level to the counselor-clinical supervisor level. And draw similar conclusions.
Of course, the reader might have already surmised from the title of my monograph “Clinical Supervision of Clinical Supervision”, that I would also move the material and methods from the counselor-clinical supervisor relationship up one more level.
If so, the reader would be right.
And in that way, I also conclude that AI and internet searches can’t do the clinical supervision of clinical supervision by themselves either.
The other resource I encourage reading for those not convinced is the Clinical Supervision of Clinical Supervision monograph in its entirety.
In summary, Jason’s apprehension of an implicit assumption, understanding of its central importance, and application of that material to our work – as demonstrated in his most recent post – are examples of the source material from which my answer “no” to my colleague’s recent question derives.
