Many studies flag potential psychological costs of emerging technologies.

Psychology has long been focused on problems, though not always.

Concerns about the potential harms of certain AI applications are evidence-based.

Managing use of these technologies carefully could be key.

Every few weeks, we are met with a new publication that warns against the effects of AI on psychological functioning, from “blandification”, “cognitive offloading”, and “AI sycophancy”, to decreasing neurological activity and “colonizing” how we think. Around the same time I last published on AI here, I came across a beautiful intervention by AI, buried within an even more beautiful story about whales’ social behaviour. It got me thinking: is psychology biased towards problematizing AI?

For starters, it is worth considering the field itself and its origins. Psychology has long been wed to subfields such as “abnormal psychology” and psychopathology that focus on pathology and problems. In his book on the history of psychoanalysis, George Makari notes that the field was initially developed through the study of animals, children, and psychopathology. Granted, figures such as Wundt were less focused on this, and the work of William James was even more positively inclined – asking more how psychology could help humans flourish – the field of........

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