There's a striking shortage of mental health care providers in the U.S. New research suggests that AI chatbots can fill in the gaps and be remarkably effective while doing so.

Artificial intelligence can deliver mental health therapy "with as much efficacy as, or more than, human clinicians," said NPR. New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the results delivered by a bot designed at Dartmouth College.

What did the commentators say? 
There was initially a lot of "trial and error" training AI to work with humans suffering from depression and anxiety, said researcher Nick Jacobson, but the bot ultimately delivered outcomes similar to the "best evidence-based trials of psychotherapy." Patients developed a "strong relationship with an ability to trust" the digital therapist.

Other experts see "reliance on bot-based therapy as a poor substitute for the real thing," said Axios. Therapy is about "forming a relationship with another human being who understands the complexity of life," said sociologist Sherry Turkle. But another expert, Skidmore College's Lucas LaFreniere, said it depends on whether patients are willing to suspend their disbelief. "If the client is perceiving empathy," he said, "they benefit from the empathy."

AI therapists could "further isolate vulnerable patients instead of easing suffering," Nigel Mulligan, a lecturer in psychotherapy at Dublin City University, said at The Conversation. It's easy to understand why people would turn to a "convenient and cost-effective resource" for mental health services. But while bots can be "beneficial for some," they are generally not an "effective substitute" for a human therapist, who offers "emotional nuance" and "intuition." 

What next?
In February, the American Psychological Association made a presentation to the Federal Trade Commission warning against chatbots "masquerading" as therapists that could "drive vulnerable people to harm themselves or others," said The New York Times. "People are going to be misled and will misunderstand what good psychological care is," said Arthur C. Evans Jr., APA's chief executive. In California, said Vox, a bill has been introduced to ban tech companies from deploying an AI program that "pretends to be a human certified as a health provider." 

Colossal Biosciences claims to have reached several milestones in its "Jurassic Park"-like ambition to bring several extinct species back to life, helping it capture investor support. But some activists and scientists are critical of the murky science of de-extinction. 

The company got pushback over its recent claims that it resurrected the dire wolf. But the debate misses the point, said Beth Shapiro, Colossal's chief science officer, to CNN. The scientists successfully resurrected the "functional essence" of the dire wolf. Still, this clarification begs the question: Is de-extinction even a thing?

Is it scientifically possible?
DNA recovered from long-dead creatures is "profoundly degraded, chewed up by time and bacteria," and only fragments are recovered, said geneticist and de-extinction critic Adam Rutherford at The Guardian. These fragments comprise a "tiny proportion of the total amount of DNA in a living creature." Much of what gets lost has a "function in living cells" and is "species-specific." This makes the proposed process of de-extinction much different than the famous 1996 cloning of the sheep Dolly, whose complete genome was taken from a living sheep. 

Are de-extinction claims true?
No matter how cute the dire wolf pups might be, Colossal's claims about them are "absolute bollocks," Rutherford said on his Punctuated Equilibrium substack. The three pups are "by any sensible definition, genetically engineered gray wolves," an entirely different species, and "dire wolves remain very extinct." These pups have been "experimented on for no good reason — not for medical knowledge, not for conservation reasons, just for business."

The company's efforts to de-extinct animals like the woolly mammoth are "as far as conservation efforts go incredibly misguided," conservation expert Nitin Sekar said at Ars Technica. Ultimately, Colossal's efforts will not "end up being about helping wild elephants or saving the climate" but "creating creatures for human spectacle." If conservation is the goal, Colossal should be "willing to pivot from a project that grabs news headlines to ones that would likely make positive differences." 

Despite ethical questions, the birth of the pups is a "major breakthrough in genetics," said Michael Knapp, an anatomy professor at New Zealand's University of Otago, to The Washington Post. It's easy to "brush attempts to bring back extinct species off as vanity projects without purpose," but that would "ignore the technological breakthroughs." However, whether this is an "avenue that should be further pursued is a highly complex question."