The mental health AI chatbot made for real life | Alison Darcy (Kelly Corrigan takeover)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Mental Health AI Chatbot Made for Real Life | Alison Darcy

Hosted by TED’s Kelly Corrigan in a special series takeover, this episode delves into the innovative world of AI-driven mental health support through Woebot, an AI chatbot designed to assist individuals in real-time emotional moments. Dr. Allison Darcy, a clinical research psychologist and the mind behind Woebot, shares insights into the creation, functionality, and ethical considerations of integrating AI into mental health care.

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1. Introduction to Woebot and Its Purpose

Kelly Corrigan begins the conversation by expressing her initial skepticism about AI in the realm of mental health. She delves into her transformation from being "Team Human" to understanding the profound impact AI can have in providing support where human therapists alone might fall short.

Notable Quote:

“When I was starting to learn about Woebot and Allison and the work that they've been doing, my initial reaction was negative... I wanted to have Allison share everything that her company, which is called Woebot, has learned.”
[Timestamp: 04:10]

2. Addressing the Unmet Needs in Mental Health Care

Dr. Allison Darcy explains the motivation behind Woebot, emphasizing the gap in accessibility to mental health resources. She highlights that despite advancements in psychotherapeutic treatments, the lack of availability during critical moments—like a 2 AM panic attack—necessitated an AI solution that can provide immediate support.

Notable Quote:

“I was always haunted by this idea that it doesn't really matter how sophisticated the treatments are that we make if people can't access them.”
[Timestamp: 05:52]

3. How Woebot Interacts with Users

Woebot is designed for brief, impactful interactions averaging six and a half minutes. Dr. Darcy shares that 75-80% of these conversations occur outside regular clinic hours, with some extending into the early morning hours when individuals are most vulnerable.

Notable Quote:

“It's the success looks like individuation and independence and growth.”
[Timestamp: 09:01]

4. Enhancing User Disclosure and Trust

A significant advantage of Woebot is its ability to foster quicker and more open disclosures from users. Dr. Darcy references a 2015 study demonstrating that individuals are more comfortable sharing stigmatized thoughts with AI than with humans, attributing this to the non-judgmental nature of the chatbot.

Notable Quote:

“People would rather disclose to an AI than when they believe there's a human behind that.”
[Timestamp: 08:31]

5. Ethical Considerations and Safeguards

Kelly raises concerns about privacy, control, and the potential for AI to create dependencies. Dr. Darcy addresses these by detailing Woebot’s strict guidelines against actions like flirting or selling user data. Woebot is built with the intent to support human well-being without replacing human therapists.

Notable Quote:

“We have to make sure that the tech is in service of humans, not the other way around.”
[Timestamp: 10:43]

6. Woebot’s Role in Promoting Human Interaction

Dr. Darcy emphasizes that Woebot is not designed to replace human relationships but to act as a facilitator. The chatbot encourages users to engage with real people, fostering accountability and helping individuals practice emotional self-awareness.

Notable Quote:

“Accountability is the thing that people find their most favored feature of this technology. They want that kind of accountability.”
[Timestamp: 13:56]

7. Future Implications for AI in Family Life

The discussion ventures into the potential of AI to influence family dynamics positively. Kelly imagines scenarios where AI could mediate and provide feedback on family interactions, promoting healthier communication patterns. Dr. Darcy acknowledges the possibilities while cautioning against over-reliance on AI, stressing the importance of maintaining human agency.

Notable Quote:

“It's about understanding how we're going to work together.”
[Timestamp: 16:19]

8. Ensuring Ethical AI Development

Dr. Darcy underscores the importance of intentionality in AI development. She advocates for setting clear objective functions centered on human empowerment and well-being to prevent AI from becoming manipulative or addictive.

Notable Quote:

“We have to imagine that, you know, when we say they can self-improve, you still have to tell it, how are you improving? That's the objective function.”
[Timestamp: 31:39]

9. Conclusion: Building Trust and Transparency

The episode wraps up with reflections on the necessity of transparency in AI applications. Kelly and Dr. Darcy agree that understanding who is behind AI tools and their underlying intentions is crucial for users to make informed decisions about integrating such technologies into their lives.

Notable Quote:

“It's nice to put a face behind these big, huge letters that seem to be like towering over everything. AI.”
[Timestamp: 25:51]

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Key Takeaways

• Accessibility: Woebot addresses the significant gap in mental health support availability, providing immediate assistance during critical moments.

• User Trust: The non-judgmental nature of AI fosters greater openness and disclosure among users, especially concerning stigmatized issues.

• Ethical Design: Strict guidelines and a focus on human well-being ensure that AI tools like Woebot serve as supportive allies rather than replacements for human interaction.

• Future Potential: AI has the potential to positively influence family dynamics and personal relationships by promoting healthier communication and accountability.

• Transparency: Clear understanding of AI developers' intentions and operational frameworks is essential for building user trust and ensuring ethical usage.

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of how AI can be thoughtfully integrated into mental health care, balancing technological innovation with ethical considerations to enhance human well-being.

Transcript

[Kelly Corrigan]

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[Dr. Allison Darcy]

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[Kelly Corrigan]

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[Dr. Allison Darcy]

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[Kelly Corrigan]

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[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Starting at around a dollar a day.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Listeners can get 50% off their new Simply Safe system with professional monitoring and their first month [e-mail] Ted Talks Daily that's s I m p l I safe.com Ted TalksDaily there's no safe like SimpliSafe. You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. Kelly I'm Kelly Corrigan. I'm a writer, I'm a podcaster, I'm a TED Talker and I am Taking over for Elise Hu this week for a special series on AI and family life. A guest curated a session about this topic at TED 2025. And I'm here now to share these very special talks with you, along with behind the scenes recordings and personal insights that shed light on the process of bringing them to life. So I was listening to another podcast and I heard this fabulous woman named Dr. Allison Darcy. And I admit I was swayed by her charming Irish accent, but also she has a very light touch in a very heavy world, which is creating AI therapy for people who probably wouldn't do therapy at all, anywhere, anytime, but nonetheless need support. And so I wanted to have Alison share everything that her company, which is called wobot, W o E B o T has learned by trying to be in this very soft, intimate place with people when they're struggling. You know, when I was starting to learn about Woebot and Allison and the work that they've been doing, my initial reaction was negative. I was like, oh, my God, this is the last thing people need. People need people. This is like, I'm on Team Human. I want everybody to be connecting with each other way more, eyeball to eyeball, heart to heart. I wanted Allison to go first because I thought that as my initial reaction to the whole idea of AI and parenting was kind of like, sure, they can sort through your schedule stuff, they can do logistics, but they're not going to get involved in the deeper interactions that help kids come into themselves as adults. That's just territory that will never be touched. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, no, of course that will be touched. Of course there are cases where AI will be better than some parents at some conversations. And so I turned to Allison to say, tell me everything about the 1.5 million people who have used wobot and help me understand how that might end up looking in the context specifically of family life. To disavow the audience of this separation that they might have in their mind, as I did, that there's sort of a logistics level that AI could play at, and then there's this very intimate emotional level that AI will never touch. I had to show them that AI was already in the intimate space in very meaningful ways. And so, to start us off this week, here is my conversation with Dr. Allison Darcy about the ways that AI might participate in the most intimate, consequential conversations we ever have. Welcome.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Hi. Thank you.

[Kelly Corrigan]

So will you describe for us the average wobot interaction?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Sure. Well, first of all, I suppose it's important to Say that we built Wobot to meet an unmet need. In 2017, depression was already the leading cause of disability worldwide. And I'm team human too. And I also really believe in what human therapists do. But, you know, it doesn't matter how good a therapist is. You could be the best therapist in the world, but unless you're with your patient at 2am when they are having a panic attack, you can't help them in that moment. And, you know, therapy doesn't happen in a vacuum. We all have real lives. And so. And I was a clinical research psychologist making some of the world's, you know, most sophisticated psychotherapeutic treatments. But I was always haunted by this idea that it doesn't really matter how sophisticated the treatments are that we make if people can't access them. And so access has to be part of the design, and approachability has to be part of the design, because what do you do at that 2am moment? And you can't think straight and you can't remember the thing that your therapist told you you should do in this moment. And so that for me, is why we built woebot. To meet people where they're at, in those moments when it's actually hardest to reach out to another person.

[Kelly Corrigan]

And how long do they stay on with you?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

So it's. They're brief, very brief encounters. Six and a half minutes is the average length of time. And about 75 to 80% of all of those conversations are happening outside of clinic hours. The longest conversations people have are between 2 and 5am yeah.

[Kelly Corrigan]

And is WOBAT good for role play?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Actually, we have found that generative AI, so woebot was built to be rules based. Everything Woebot says has been scripted by our writing team and under the supervision of clinical psychologists. And so wobot will never. It's very safe, it's on the rails. Wobot will never make up something new. But we have been exploring the generative models, and turns out generative AI is really good for role plays. And it kind of speaks to some of the advantages that AIs have in that they're really good at doing the stuff that humans aren't so great at. And I think role plays are one of those things for sure.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Do people disclose more quickly with an AI than they would with a person?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Yeah, so that was shown in an early study in about 2015. I believe that people would rather disclose to an AI than when they believe there's a human behind that. And that's particularly pronounced for things that are Perceived as very stigmatized. And so yeah, there's a sort of an advantage to being an AI in that it's never judging you. You don't have to think about how you appear to the AI.

[Kelly Corrigan]

So yeah, when I think about it, I think there's at least four concerns come to mind. One is price always. One is privacy always. Like who gets these transcripts? One is control. Who defines what an AI responds and what theories and, and theses of change are they working from? But the one that scares the hell out of me is the perfection problem. And sometimes I wonder if we might inadvertently be creating the conditions for total rejection of humanity, of dumb, boring, incomplete, half asleep humans. When you could have this thing that is so hyper responsive. Do you feel like people, once they find Wobot, they never want to leave it?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Definitely not, no. Well, because. But that's how it was designed, right? So. Well, what would have been designed? It all depends on what are you building the thing for. And if you're building it for, you know, human well being, you know, human advancement, the, you know, objective is similar to a parent you want. The success looks like individuation and independence and growth. And that's partly, you know, challenging the idea of perfection. Just like you did. A great AI should be helping you see that perfection is just an illusion, particularly when it comes to humans. That's what makes us human. And that's something to be celebrated. But of course, to your point, it really depends on who is the designer and what is this AI being built for. That is going to be and is such a crucial question which goes to business model. Sure.

[Kelly Corrigan]

So who pays for wobot?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Well, currently wobot's distributed through, in partnership with health systems. But that's right, we build for again these short encounters, let people talk and be invited to use a skill that's inspired by one of these great therapeutic approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy and then get them back to their life as soon as possible. Yeah, we never build for engagement, keeping people in the conversation as long as they can, which we just think is sort of a road to addiction. Right?

[Kelly Corrigan]

Yeah.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

And that's all about the incentive. That's how are you being paid. And as entrepreneurs, we all have a responsibility to ensure that the AIs are in service of humans, not the other way around.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Yeah, And I wonder if we create this dependence on AI therapy companions that you'll never be able to say I did it myself, none of us will.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Well, I still think the humans are doing it themselves. Right. Because that's the beauty of an AI, it's not a great therapeutic process, if you like. While this isn't really therapy, structurally it is so different. But a great process is just asking the person the right questions. They have to, they're the ones that have to do all of the work. They're the ones that have to shift their mindset or acknowledge their role in a conflict with somebody or tune into their deepest, darkest negative thinking. And that stuff is hard. And that is all on the person. The AI is just going to ask you the right questions to get there. So I don't think this isn't giving advice or giving a diagnosis. It's very much and should be about helping people develop their own resources. It's like I use the analogy of a, you know those mechanical machines that shoot tennis balls at people and that they can. So they can practice their swing.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Yeah.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

To get better at the game with the human. You know, these are fundamentally tools, I believe that and I think they should be built like that. Yeah. And make sure that that is the objective function. If you like, is human betterment.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Is there anything you do explicitly to push people back into IRL interactions or.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Oh, right, well, yeah, exactly. That would be part of Woebot's kind of value set. We constantly would talk somebody through what is the point of avoidance? And if it is discomfort with other people then Woebot will sort of encourage that person to follow through with speaking to another human and then will come back a few days later and say, hey, you said you were going to talk to Lucy. Have you done it? And we find actually in our data that aside from the daily sort of check ins which facilitates emotional self awareness, that accountability is the thing that people find their most favored feature of this technology. They want that kind of accountability.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Do you have red lines? Has Wobot sat around and said there's a whole set of things that people might do in this space that we are not going to do?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Yeah, absolutely loads like give advice, diagnose, give away data, sell data especially to advertisers, flirt.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Right.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Because that muddies the dynamic of what is happening here. You know, again it has to be so clear what is the purpose of this conversation and what are we trying to achieve? And staying within that boundary is really important.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Is the effectiveness of therapy getting better over time or is this sort of element in the mix maybe going to increase the efficacy across the board?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Yeah, see this is the question. I think we haven't done a great job of innovating. I think in psychotherapy, forgive me, some of my best Friends are clinical psychologists, but we're not doing a great job since founding the company. Things are much, much worse now. And it's interesting seeing all of this incredible innovation and technological advancement and you know, where we haven't moved the needle at all. We are still as anxious and depressed as ever. And in fact, a recent World Health Organization survey or study found that 20% of high schoolers have seriously considered suicide. This is getting so much worse. So something needs to change. And I think we need to expand the aperture and bring in tools, additional tools. It's never about replacing the great human therapists that we have. But most people aren't getting in front of a therapist. And even if they are, they're not there beside you as you live your life.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Yeah. Could you imagine a point where you could put an AI on the kitchen table and then the family could have one of its sort of little fights, shall we say? And then it would take the transcript and say, well, Edward, you shouldn't have said this. And Kelly, you interrupted and like, could you imagine that kind of feedback on the dynamics that are keeping a family cycling on the same dumb patterns over and over? Not being personal at all here, Edward.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Anyway, as you were saying that I was imagining my own family. I'm the youngest of six and just thinking, I had that laptop flying through the window so fast. Yeah. Again, this is a tool set, I believe, and we can build tools, we can use the tools in certain ways. But I think you're bringing up something else that's interesting in that it's not about replicating the models of therapeutic approaches that were built for human delivery. I think it's about leaning into, now, what can the AIs bring to the table that's new and that's novel and that's specific to that technology, that tool set. And that's really, I think, the opportunity moving forward with these more advanced tools.

[Kelly Corrigan]

I'm thinking about your comment about flirting, and my best friend is pretty sure that her therapist falls asleep on her, but she has bangs and she can't tell if she's nodding off or just really thinking. And obviously all therapists vary, parents vary. Do you have a thought about which has more potential for damage, an AI or a human?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

That is a big question. I think the AIs have plenty of potential for damage, as do humans. And it's very early days with the technology. The thing is that we have the opportunity to develop AIs with intentionality. And of course, there are unintended consequences and we need to build those Structures in addition to be able to monitor and watch those and take advantage of positive directions. So we'll see. Fundamentally, these are just tools. And also humanity is humanity for a reason. There are things that are common. Pain is something that is common to all of us. And we will all go through difficult moments, we will all experience grief, we will all lose a loved one. And it's about understanding how we're going to work together. But yeah, just to reiterate that point, we have to make sure that the tech is in service of humans, not the other way around.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Thank you so much for coming to Ted. We have much more after a short break. So 12 minutes is not a very long conversation. I have to say that from the start. And so we were so constrained. I don't think I've ever done a 12 minute interview in my life. And I've interviewed probably six or seven hundred people over the years. So it was my job up front to reduce the number of questions from like 18 was the number that I really wanted to ask in a perfect world down to something like four or five so that she could really open up the topic.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

There's just one thing that I'm missing.

[Kelly Corrigan]

From having heard this. That's Lucy Little, my producer. Lucy was one of several TED staffers who gave feedback on earlier stages of the conversation.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

I do think the question of where is this AI learning its information from? Like who? Because I think that's a huge. Oh yeah, we should say that from the outset. Right. So that people realize it's. This is not a generative AI. So this is. Yeah, we're that, whatever. Like Mobot's so old school in lots of ways. It's like the retro AI therapist. It's everything WBOT says has been scripted. So we're using sort of machine learning and natural language processing to understand what people are saying in key areas. But it's a simulation of a conversation. So it's very on the rails. Now where we've used large language models, it has been to, you know, tap into their power to better understand what the person is saying. But fundamentally it's just not. It's not trained on the Internet.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Right. So I think we want to say, get to this really good note. There's two things at the top, which is it's based on CBT and it's scripted, it's not generative. Yeah. And that's quite a lot of heady thinking. If I can only touch on four or five ideas here, what are the most salient essential ideas such that as you go through the rest of the session where you're going to meet these other five speakers. You are positioned in the best possible way to process what people are putting in front of you. So the first thing that Allison clarified for me that I thought was essential and doesn't get talked about enough honestly, is who pays for the product and how will the product be evaluated in terms of its efficacy? Because if the profit motive involves keeping people on the app longer so that you can, say, collect more data or place more ads, the app will be designed in one way, which could be enfeebling. It could be creating this terrible dependency where a person becomes less strong and less independent and less confident in their own instincts and more addicted to this little assistant who's going to tell them what to say or do every time they have a strange interaction with somebody in their life, it sort of forces.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

People into a direct consumer construct which then has the danger of forcing innovators into this place where they're now just trying to hijack attention and build for addiction and not actual well being. Right. So that. So I think that the big frustration is not the limitation of the tech per se. It's trying to find the construct where it can live and be ethical still and be built around an objective function of human well being.

[Kelly Corrigan]

But when it comes to wobot, I was relieved to know that they are paid by insurers based on well being metrics. The biggest shift in my feelings thanks to talking to Allison is this possible partnership between people and AI. Like one thing that she said during one of the pre calls was that for some people, the way that Woebot is talking to them is a model for the ways they could be talking to the people in their own lives.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

What we're talking about I think is making it easier to disclose, to share something and have practice with sharing that thing. That's what we've noticed from wobot is like, you're right, people are going to woebot with things they may never have shared with another person, but it makes them more likely to then go on and share it with somebody else. Like, it's a practice of externalization.

[Kelly Corrigan]

It's very helpful to be in healthy interaction and see how that flows. Which is basically like asking follow up questions, making sure that you understood what the person said and meant. All of that gets modeled in these AI conversations so regularly that it does seem reasonable that a person might start using those same techniques. Follow up questions confirming that you understand what they really meant in their live interactions with other people. And that would be a tremendous step forward. I mean, if people talk to each other that way with more intention to understand, less determined to be understood, people might get somewhere. Relationships would change. Another huge takeaway from being with Allison throughout the prep period and then also sitting across from her in front of all those people was that we should know who's behind AI because when you meet somebody that lovely, charming and conscientious, you feel very differently about AI, which is so anonymous in its nature. But the way that Alison was talking about it, it's not at all that it's something that Allison and the people that she has recruited based on their knowledge of cognitive behavioral therapy, what those techniques are and what makes it effective, what they're putting in front of us. So it's nice to put a face behind these big, huge letters that seem to be like towering over everything. A I. One of the things I've been thinking about since TED in terms of everything I learned by getting to know Allison and Woebot, is could there be a really smart, effective way to use an ingestion AI to observe, if you will, a family interaction or a couple's interaction or an interaction between a parent and a child, and give notes back to all involved?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Loads of people say to me, but when I'm a therapist, you know, I'm reading the non verbal communication in the room, and I say, well, you're doing that because you're human and that, you know, humans are not, as we know this, aren't as able to disclose to another human as they are to an AI. And so, you know, it's actually a very different dynamic. And the AI dynamic doesn't necessarily need to read nonverbal communication. I would say with the massive asterisks. And the asterisks is I don't know how an AI would fare when it's not looking at the. The. The nonverbal communication. Exactly, exactly.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Is big. Is louder than theoretically it might be.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

It might be useful. But I would say a behavioral family therapy, as I was, you know, trained to do it, that's a bit better of a fit because the therapist role there is as expert.

[Kelly Corrigan]

What about if Woebot or another AI is treating all the members of a family, if impartial, unbiased, Woebot was talking to me and my brothers and my parents, maybe it could help me by saying, here's what your brother's really mad about from that vacation in 1978.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

But it's the important thing for you to have that insight. Or is it for Your brother to be able to have the insight and share that with you.

[Kelly Corrigan]

The only tension I felt was like, was it to the greater good that there was an AI that could walk you through some of your cognitive distortions at 2 in the morning? Or is it important in some way that we learn how to do that moment alone? I think at the end of the day, maybe the most important takeaway from talking to Alison is a process point. It's like, how are you evaluating AI options that are going to come across your desk? Like, could we be smarter consumers and advisors to one another as options become available? I wonder if AI is going to be a great new reception. Skeptical for very scary thoughts like, I tried cocaine or my boyfriend wants to try choking. Yeah. That there's no way my children are going to come to me with that. And they never would have. Yes. But will they come to you? And then what will. What is the responsibility of a company who's in that conversation?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Yeah, this is a real topical issue because while some of these AIs right now used for this purpose wouldn't necessarily be covered by the same law as a confidential therapist patient relationship, we feel that people using it may feel it is. And so we actually try and hit those things regardless. We treat it as if it is a confidential relationship. So, for example, where we are working with health setting where they have in the past and they have asked for the full transcript data, we've absolutely said no way. And we've walked away from deals to say there's no way. Those things are. They're sacred. They are sacred. And while they're not protected by law in the same way as a patient therapist notes are, we hold it to that same bar. But of course there is no law. So we're one company among many that are doing this right now. So that's just something to note.

[Kelly Corrigan]

And I think we're getting smarter through Alison's talk and the talks that are coming up about how we evaluate what questions would we ask of the developer and the designer and the company that's offering us these certain products? How would we know who to work with and who to let in? Because we begin the interaction, we say yes to something and it enters our home. And I think it's already been clear that we were asleep when we let social media enter our lives. And I think many people were asleep when they let something like Alexa into their lives. Like, I think you have to know exactly what is in those terms and conditions that we're all clicking. Okay, okay, okay. Before you open the door to your most private spaces.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Well, I think it is interesting. I think that a lot of people aren't comfortable.

[Kelly Corrigan]

That's Chloe Sasha Brooks, the TED curator, who was my guiding light through this entire process during my first exploratory call with Alison.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

At the same time, I think that the way that you're talking about it, Allison, is extremely reasonable. Like, I think you really have a clear sense of the boundaries and the lines that we need to draw between what is human and what isn't. I think to me the bigger question for people listening to this would be what if the boundaries that we set around this or that our intentions set up for this get violated just by nature of the thing spinning out of control? Yeah. And so how do we prevent that? Can we prevent that? Yeah, like I, I know and that's right. And I, I think one of the challenges we have in the field of AI is that most people don't understand the tech. And so it's so easy to scare and scaremonger. But you have to imagine, you know, when we say they can self improve, you still have to tell it, how are you improving? That's the objective function. What is the objective function and what are you proving towards? We still get to say that's human empowerment. That is human well being. Right. But they are still just tools.

[Kelly Corrigan]

And that's it for today. Come back tomorrow for the legendary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and mixed by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar and fact checked by the TED research team. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estafinos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene and Tansika Sangmar Nivong. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Belarrazo. I'm Kelly Corrigan, guest host of TED Talks Daily, here for a special week of content around the topic of AI and family life. And please join me at my podcast, Kelly Corrigan wonders wherever you listen to podcasts. I'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for listening. I mean, this is a total overstatement, but do you think everybody, every family should have like a, a wobot as part of their family unit?

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

I don't, I, I think everyone can use a personal ally and I think AIs need to be should be constructed to so that they're, you know, they, they actually help the human condition and that, that's their prime objective. But the nai in the family unit is something I have to say, I must confess, even being trained family therapist, I've never really thought about before. Isn't that interesting? Why is that? I don't know that.

[Kelly Corrigan]

Thank God we met opening a whole.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

New thing for you. Just open the door. Now at Verizon, we have some big news for your peace of mind for all our customers, existing and new. We're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on MyPlan and my home. That's future you peace of mind. And everyone can save on a brand new phone on MyPlan. When you trade in any phone from one of our top brands, that's new phone peace of mind. Because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us, we got you. Visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

[Kelly Corrigan]

If you're anything like us, you love attention. And my favorite way to get all eyes on me is with next level, shiny, glossy hair.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Which is why we're so excited to tell y'all about the new Lamellar gloss collection from the girlies at Tresemme.

[Kelly Corrigan]

And Gigglers, we've got you too. Because Tresemme partnered with us to bring you 1-800-gloss, a special bonus episode of Giggly Squad, where Hannah and I give advice on all things hair and giving gloss. Check out the episode and grab the Lamellar gloss collection today because I'm officially declaring this spring gloss season this Mother's Day.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Show the moms in your life just.

[Kelly Corrigan]

How much they mean to you with a stunning bouquet from 1-800-flowers.com for almost 50 years, 1-800-flowers has set the standard for high quality bouquets. Right now, order early from 1-800-FLOWERS and.

[Dr. Allison Darcy]

Save up to 40% on gorgeous bouquets.

[Kelly Corrigan]

And one of a kind arrangements guarant guaranteed to make her day. Save up to 40% today at 1800flowers.com acast that's 1800flowers.com acast, the official florist of Mother's Day.