Care in the Machine No. 1: Arkansas Joins the Compact

This is a past issue of Care in the Machine, a free weekly note from Dr. Michael Jones on counseling, ethics, and the technology showing up in our work. Subscribe here and the next issue will land in your inbox on Monday.

Issue No. 1 · Monday, August 3, 2026

Friends, welcome to Care in the Machine.

If you are reading this, we have crossed paths somewhere. A training, a talk, a conversation about where this profession is heading. So let me tell you what this is. Once a week I will send you a few teaching ideas for your practice, a handful of developments worth knowing, and an idea I am still working out, all through the one lens I cannot help but bring, that technology should serve the relationship and never stand in for it. No hype, no doom, just a counselor educator thinking out loud alongside you.

The part I mean most: I want this to be a conversation. If a question keeps surfacing in your work, or a tool has you unsure, or there is a topic you want me to explore, reply and tell me. I read every one, and what you send will shape what shows up here.

You can find the rest of my work at michaeljonesphd.com, where the speaking, consulting, mentorship, and trainings all live. Come look around. Now, to this week.

This week's teaching ideas

For the therapist: when a client says they asked the chatbot first. Resist the pull to feel replaced, or to warn them off. Ask what they went looking for. "What made you want to check?" and "What did it tell you?" Their answer shows what worried them at 11pm, what language they trust, and where they did not yet feel they could come to you. Curiosity keeps the alliance open; judgment closes it, and that spirit is the whole intervention.

For the supervisor: ask where the AI already is. Put one direct, non-punitive question to your supervisees this month. Where are you using AI in your clinical work, in your notes, your treatment planning, your intake summaries? Most are using something, and few have been invited to say so. Naming it turns a hidden habit into a teachable one, and it is the competence and responsibility conversation our codes already ask of us. Gatekeeping at a distance starts with knowing what stands between your supervisee and their client.

For the counselor educator: teach the check, don't spring the trap. Grading season brings the citation problem. Rather than hunting for fabricated sources, teach verification in week one. Nearly every article carries a DOI, a permanent address; paste it into doi.org and it resolves or it does not. Have students verify their own reference lists before they submit. Students who feel caught learn to hide, and students who feel taught learn to check their own work. That habit is what we actually want them carrying into the profession.

This week in the field

My home state got in the water. On July 30, Arkansas began granting privileges to practice under the Counseling Compact, joining Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia, and Indiana. Thirty-nine states plus Washington, D.C. have now passed the legislation. I have practiced in Arkansas for more than fifteen years, so this one landed close. So what for us: a license is starting to travel the way it always should have. It also raises the question every counselor crossing a state line has to answer, whether they are ready to do it well, in law, in ethics, and in a crisis plan that reaches another state. Check your own state at counselingcompact.gov.

The states are drawing lines around AI "therapy." Five states enacted restrictions on AI therapy chatbots this year, joining Illinois and Nevada from 2025. Maine's took effect July 29, Colorado's lands August 12, and Vermont, Tennessee, and Rhode Island round out the list. The common thread: a chatbot cannot present itself as a licensed professional, and a licensed clinician cannot hand independent clinical decisions to one. So what for us: these laws mostly write into statute a boundary the profession already holds, that clinical judgment belongs to a licensed human. Learn your own state's language, and tell clients plainly what a chatbot can be for them and what it cannot. (Becker's Behavioral Health, July 2026.)

APA wants clinicians ahead of the wellness apps. The American Psychological Association issued a health advisory urging safeguards around generative AI chatbots and wellness apps used for mental health, cautioning that these tools do not substitute for care and can miss real risk. So what for us: your clients are already using these between sessions. The advisory gives you language to raise it first, as a shared safety conversation rather than a correction after the fact.

An idea I'm floating

A care-ethics checklist for any tool that enters the room. Here is something I am still shaping, and I would value your read. Every time a new AI tool shows up in our work, the note it drafts, the risk score it suggests, the intake it summarizes, I hold it against five questions borrowed from the ethics of care. Am I still attentive to this client, or is the tool doing my noticing for me? Who is responsible when it is wrong? Am I competent to use it here? Is it responsive to the actual person in front of me? And does it earn trust, or simply assume it? A rule tells you what not to do. A question keeps you in the room. I am testing it in public before I write it up. Tell me where it bends.

BC-TMH renewal, in one place

Short CE courses, two clock hours each, approved for BC-TMH renewal hours.

Practicing Across State Lines: Law, Ethics, and Safety in Telemental Health — $39
AI at the Screen: Ethical Use of AI Tools in Teletherapy — $39
Culturally Responsive Care: Presence Across the Screen — $39

Also worth your time

The Telemental Health Supervision Certificate arrives August 17. Six hours on alliance, ethics, and gatekeeping at a distance. Join the waitlist.

PESI AI in Clinical Practice Conference, October 29 to 30, online. I'm hosting. Register here.

Continuing education provided by Renewed Vision Counseling Services, NBCC-Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6549. Counselor Education Collective is the storefront.

Stay curious,
Dr. Jones
Michael Jones, PhD, LPC-S, NCC, BC-TMH

Enjoy this? Subscribe to Care in the Machine and the next issue will land in your inbox on Monday.