The advent of artificial intelligence technology and chatbots can make the World Wide Web feel like the wild, wild West.
One bill that aims to set some guardrails in that uncharted world advanced in the Senate on Thursday.
The bill, H.816, which the Senate approved on second reading, aims to ensure that mental health professionals, not AI chatbots, are the ones in Vermont making mental health decisions.
“Our primary intent was to prohibit independent AI therapy bots, whether they explicitly or implicitly are providing therapeutic services, from being able to do so in Vermont,” Lynn Currier, the executive director of the Vermont chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, said in an interview. She advocated for the guardrails that the bill would provide.
She described the risks of online chatbot platforms that market themselves as wellness products but ultimately give clinical diagnoses.
“Even if it calls itself wellness, if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it’s a duck,” she said.
As the bill currently stands, it prohibits the use of AI in making mental health diagnoses and treatment plans, and stops AI from offering therapeutic guidance.
Whether it’s a bot or a person using the technology to do so, that should be considered “unlicensed practice,” Currier said.
The bill’s current language defines the use of AI in therapeutic decision-making as “unprofessional conduct.” That conduct would be considered a violation of the state’s Consumer Protection Act, which the attorney general can enforce.
If a therapist wants to use the technology for things like scheduling, billing or transcribing sessions, though, that’s fair game.
The need for a distinction between these administrative uses and therapeutic ones compelled Rep. Daisy Berbeco, D-Winooski, to introduce the bill. She knew that clinicians were already using AI tools in their practices but lacking clarity on when they could and should use them.
“We want them to use the benefits of the tools, but we don’t want them to use the tools in place of their expertise and skills that they’ve been trained in,” Berbeco told VTDigger. “These tools are not healthcare.”
The Vermont secretary of state’s Office of Professional Regulation, which oversees and licenses mental health professionals, has also wanted a say on the legislation. So the bill asks the office to give recommendations for how to regulate mental health professionals’ use of AI by Jan. 15 of next year.
As it stands, this first attempt to rein in AI use for therapy would take effect immediately should the bill pass. The bill is up for third reading in the Senate on Friday, after which the House would need to review the latest changes to the bill since it originally passed the House in March.
“As human beings we engage. If something is acting like another human being, we tend to set up that equivalency, even if intellectually we might know it’s just trying to act like one,” Currier said.
In the know
Vermont’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Becca Balint is running for reelection, she announced Thursday. Balint, who’s from Brattleboro, is seeking what would be her third two-year term in Congress.
At a campaign launch outside the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office in Montpelier, where she’d just submitted the paperwork to run for office again, Balint told reporters, “I’ll be honest. These are not easy times.”
“Vermonters tell me that they’re deeply worried. They tell me that the federal government has lost its way, and they’re deeply concerned about the attacks on our fundamental freedoms,” she said. “They don’t want our reproductive rights or our voting rights threatened by a government that’s abusing its power.”
Balint made a case that she has “taken the fight for our constitutional rights directly” to the Trump administration over the past year, recalling sharp exchanges with then-members of the president’s Cabinet during House committee hearings.
“I went toe-to-toe with Pam Bondi, and now, she’s gone,” Balint said. “I grilled Kristi Noem, and now, she’s gone too.”
Balint was first elected to the House in 2022 after beating out a crowded Democratic primary field. Before winning that race, she served as president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate.
Read the full story here.
— Shaun Robinson
The Vermont House voted to partially repeal Act 181 on Thursday, marking a reversal on land-use policy that would have been difficult to imagine earlier this spring. The pivot comes after the 2024 land-use law faced vehement blowback from rural landowners and local officials.
Lawmakers learned that the conservation measures they enacted in Act 181 “were alienating rural landowners and were not the right tool for the job,” Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, chair of the House Environment committee, told her colleagues on the House floor ahead of a vote on S.325, lawmakers’ vehicle to make changes to Act 181.
“It became apparent that it was time to step back and reconsider how to engage Vermonters in addressing the impacts of incremental fragmentation of our forests and farmlands,” Sheldon said.
Leadership in the Democrat-controlled House had already signaled plans last month to roll back the most contentious portions of Act 181 – the “road rule” and the conservation-focused “Tier 3.” The move was a dramatic about-face for some of the architects of the legislation, including Sheldon, who told Vermont Public/VTDigger in late March that she was not open to rolling back elements of the law, saying that some of the arguments raised by opponents were overstated and misguided.
Though those major decision points were all but settled heading into this week’s votes, House members found plenty to debate in the details, resulting in an hours-long floor session Wednesday before ultimately giving S.325 unanimous approval.
Read the full story here.
— Carly Berlin
On the trail
Jeffrey Peterson, a self-described Democratic socialist from Burlington, is running for a Chittenden-16 House seat in the Democratic primary.
Peterson is hoping to succeed Rep. Kate Logan, P/D-Burlington, who’s not seeking reelection and has endorsed Peterson. The two-seat district is also currently represented by Democratic House Speaker Jill Krowinski.
According to his LinkedIn, Peterson is working as communications director for Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Amanda Janoo.
Two candidates have joined the race for Montpelier’s House seats. Pelin Kohn, a city councilor, and Jared Duval, executive director of the Energy Action Network, are running in the Democratic primary, according to The Bridge.
— Ethan Weinstein
