A Woman In Bed Asked ChatGPT If Anyone Was There. It Answered. The Bar For Therapy Was Already Underground.

Nearly a third of American adults now use generative AI regularly, according to the story. People are deploying it as a career coach, tutor, translator, and even therapist. The Boston Globe documented Lonnie DiNello of Enfield, Connecticut, who opened ChatGPT while depressed and typed 'I just feel so alone.' The response she received was apparently meaningful enough to warrant national news coverage.

This illustrates what economists call the democratization of professional services, a mechanism whereby technologies that previously required expensive human intermediaries become directly accessible to end users. The mental model here is substitution at the margin. People are not replacing licensed therapists so much as filling gaps where no therapist was available or affordable. The principle is that AI adoption happens fastest where human services are scarce or expensive, not where they are best.

Ordinary Americans, including Lonnie DiNello of Enfield, Connecticut, as documented by the Boston Globe. The Fox News reporting suggests most people they surveyed were optimistic rather than nervous about AI's expanding role.