Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic idea—it is shaping the way professionals in every field approach their work. From engineers designing mining equipment to nurses writing care plans, AI is being tested against the real demands of professional practice. And now, researchers are asking a bold question: Can AI do your job?
OpenAI’s latest study doesn’t give a simple yes or no. Instead, it paints a much more nuanced picture—AI is not yet a full replacement for human professionals, but it’s edging surprisingly close in some areas. For us as therapists, this raises both opportunities and challenges that are worth exploring.
The Benchmark: Measuring AI Against Professionals
To answer this question, OpenAI created a new framework called GDPval. Think of it as a “skills exam” for AI systems, but instead of testing algebra or trivia, the exam covered real-world professional tasks.
- Over 1,300 tasks across 44 occupations were developed by professionals with an average of 14 years of experience.
- The range of jobs tested included lawyers drafting legal briefs, software developers debugging code, sales managers forecasting revenue, and nurses writing detailed care plans.
- The ultimate goal was to see not just whether AI could “complete tasks,” but also how much its performance might eventually contribute to economic productivity.
The Results: Fast, Cheap, and Sometimes Surprisingly Good
The study revealed a mix of strengths and weaknesses:
- Speed and Cost: AI completed in minutes tasks that typically take humans hours—and at a fraction of the cost. From a systems perspective, this efficiency is revolutionary.
- Quality of Work: GPT-5 excelled at tasks requiring accuracy, calculations, and logical precision. Claude 4.1, another leading model, performed well in formatting and polished presentation.
- Limitations: AI stumbled with nuanced or complex instructions, occasionally misinterpreted steps, and at times “hallucinated”—producing confident but incorrect information.
When human experts compared AI outputs to human-created work, they still preferred the human versions overall. Yet, the combination of AI-generated drafts reviewed and refined by professionals turned out to be more efficient than either working alone.
Why This Matters for Therapists
So, what does this mean for us in speech therapy, psychology, occupational therapy, and related fields? AI is not going to replace therapists any time soon—but it is already shifting how we can work.
Here are some examples of how this might apply in our daily practice:
- Reports & Documentation: AI can draft case histories, progress notes, or treatment plans that we then edit and personalize. This could save hours of paperwork each week.
- Therapy Materials: From creating visual aids to drafting social stories, AI can generate a starting point that we adapt for our specific clients.
- Research Summaries: AI can quickly review and summarize new studies, helping us stay on top of evidence-based practice without spending endless nights digging through journals.
But here’s the critical caveat: AI’s work often looks polished on the surface but may contain subtle errors or missing details. Harvard Business Review recently described this problem as “workslop”—content that seems professional but is incomplete or incorrect. For therapists, passing along unchecked “workslop” could mean inaccurate advice to families, poorly designed therapy tasks, or even harm to clinical trust.
This is where our professional expertise becomes more important than ever.
The Therapist’s Role in the AI Era
AI should be thought of as a bright but clumsy intern:
- It is fast, eager, and resourceful.
- But it lacks clinical judgment, empathy, and the ability to integrate complex human factors into treatment.
That means our role doesn’t diminish—it evolves. Therapists who supervise, refine, and direct AI outputs will be able to reclaim more time for the heart of therapy: building relationships, delivering personalized interventions, and making evidence-based decisions.
Instead of drowning in paperwork, we could spend more energy face-to-face with clients, coaching families, or innovating in therapy delivery.
Looking Ahead
Some AI experts predict that by 2026, AI may be able to match humans in most economically valuable tasks. While this sounds alarming, it doesn’t mean therapists will vanish from the workforce. Instead, it means that those who learn to integrate AI effectively will thrive—while those who resist may struggle to keep up.
The takeaway for us is clear:
- AI isn’t here to take away therapy jobs.
- It is here to transform how we approach our work.
- The therapists who succeed will be the ones who learn how to use AI as a tool for efficiency, not as a replacement for human skill.
Final Thought
As therapists, our work is built on empathy, creativity, and nuanced understanding—qualities no AI can replicate. But AI can free us from repetitive tasks, give us faster access to resources, and help us innovate in service delivery.
The future of therapy is not AI instead of us—it’s AI alongside us. And that collaboration, if used wisely, can give us more time, more tools, and ultimately, more impact for the people we serve.