Mention the phrase "robot psychologist" and meme-worthy images of automatons or perhaps human-like robot hosts fictionalized by HBO's Westworld may come to mind. Yet part of what practicing psychologists do, such as administering certain types of psychological tests, assessments, and questionnaires, can be automated -- the technical capabilities exist today. And the technology is growing exponentially more sophisticated. For example, researchers at MIT have created an artificial neural network computer model that can detect depression from natural conversation [1]. Will robot psychologists be commonplace one day?

Artificial-intelligence engineers have a problem: They often don't know what their creations are thinking. As artificial intelligence grows in complexity and prevalence, it also grows more powerful. AI already has factored into decisions about who goes to jail and who receives a loan. There are suggestions AI should determine who gets the best chance to live when a self-driving car faces an unavoidable crash. Defining AI is slippery and growing more so, as startups slather the buzzword over whatever they are doing.

We knew it was coming. It's just a bit closer than we thought. According to an article in the Daily Mail, a new dawn of artificial intelligence is upon us, where robots are able to interrogate suspects, provide therapy, detect emotions with 80% accuracy, make decisions in the workplace, detect just from facial features whether someone is a criminal (with a remarkable 90% accuracy), and more. Plus, Sony is apparently working on a robot that can develop emotional bonds with people (here's hoping it sounds like Scarlett Johannsson). When you combine this with the eerily human-like features being developed, such as Sophia, the most advanced android to date, it'll be interesting to see where things head in the next few years. It's come a long way since that old "talking psychologist" program called Eliza that used to run on Radio Shack TRS-80 computers (on a cassette tape, no less!).