[m3047]

> it's essentially impossible to ever gauge the efficacy of AI in doing anything...

... compared to humans? Yes. This is a philosophical conundrum which you tie yourself up in if you choose to postulate the artificial intelligence as equivalent to, rather than a simulacrum of, human intelligence. We fly (planes): are we "smarter" than birds? We breathe underwater: are we "smarter" than fish? And so on.

How do you discern that the "other" has an internal representation and dialogue? Oh. Because a human programmed it to be so. But how do you know that another human has internal representation and dialogue? I do (I have conscious control over the verbal dialogue but that's another matter), so I choose to believe that others (humans) do (not the verbal part so much unfortunately). I could extend that to machines, but why? I need a better reason than "because". I'd rather extend the courtesy to a bird or a fish first.

This is an epistemological / religious question: a matter of faith. There are many things which we can't really know / rigorously define against objective criteria.

[colinmorelli]

This, similar to your other comment, is unrelated to my comment.

This is about determining if AI can be a equivalent or better (defined as: achieving equal or better clinical outcomes) therapist than a human. That is a question that can be studied and answered.

Whether artificial intelligence accurately models human intelligence, or whether an airplane is "smarter" than a bird, are entirely separate questions that can perhaps serve to explain _why/how_ the AI can (or can't) achieve better results than the thing we're comparing against, but not whether it does or does not. Those questions are perhaps unanswerable based on today's knowledge. But they're not prerequisites.