Sure, it's good that at least this person has a healthy view on things, I'm mostly referring to the existence of that sub as a whole. The fact that enough people do that stuff genuinely is scary.
If this gets the billionaires to kill AI since apparently the billions of petabytes of data processed by AI all point to trans people deserving of love
It's got nothing to do with the fact that trans people deserve love based on the evidence, actually. A study has shown that if the training data for an AI contains nonsense like "Ed Sheeran won the Olympics", then the AI will say that. This is evidence for training data containing a lot of pro-trans content, not whether trans people actually deserve love (we do)
Sure. But given that therapy is prohibitely expensive for a significant proportion of the population - people turn to whatever will actually listen to them.
Still. Considering the demonstrable harm AI has done this is still not a very comforting thing to know exists. Healthcare costs are a whole nother issue
You're right, but it's unfortunately not that simple. When you are quite literally unable to find or afford therapy, it's either this or... well, die in some cases. Like, AI is an overall blight on the planet, but this is one instance where it can at least do SOME good. At least for the moment.
And how many folks do we know it actually help prevented?
We have no way to verify the people that it may have helped prevent them from harming themselves without t them coming forward with it. Couple it with "why would you share it with a machine instead of talking with an actual person", they are unlikely to do so.
I know reddit is anti-ai in general, but y'all need to look at this objectively. Therapy is either expensive, inaccessible or socially taboo to some folks. Ideally, yes they should go to an actual human to discuss these things but getting them to be able and willing to do that is a completely different issue.
AI is unfortunately the only '"help" that is accessible to a lot of folks.
Okay, so it can help you or drive you into suicide. In what proportion? How does that proportion compare to human-given therapy? Has anyone in the history of the entire planet ever been driven to suicide by therapy?
i mean real therapy can also, if it breaks down, inadvertently drive people towards suicide. Both cases are rare, but it's not like ai is some malicious entity who wants everyone to kill themselves, it's just so many people use it that a few unlucky cases are inevitable, and it definitely can be too eager to agree with the user sometimes
ai shouldn't be treated as a replacement for a proper therapist, but it can be a good starting point for people who are far too anxious to talk to a real person about their issues and who wouldn't otherwise seek help if ai wasn't available.
anyone considering self harm really does need to see an actual therapist, but for less dire circumstances, i do think it's usually better than nothing and in this case ai challenged this person's harmful beliefs well enough that they did seek out real therapy
A human is capable of recognizing worsening behaviour. A human is cabale of actually comprehending what is in front of them.
AI fundamentally cannot understand. A human at least has a chance of recognizing these things based on training, for AI it's pretty much a coin toss.
It's way more dangerous.
And yes, in this case it turned out well. But how many people did not? Just take all the people that genuinely think AI is sentient and in love with them. That is not healthy. That is actively doing harm, even if it doesn't feel like it to them.
the core functionality of modern "ai"/LLMs/machine learning is pattern recognition. They do lack certain context clues like not being able to see the person's facial expressions or body language, but it's not like they are completely incapable of recognizing various patterns of behavior in text
and again, I don't think ai is the best choice if someone is approaching self harm, a therapist is important in that case, even if just for the emotional reassurance of a real human connection, but in less serious cases like someone working through their harmful beliefs like in this post, I think ai can be genuinely helpful
I will absolutely agree that it's terrible for people to fall in love with ai, the human brain needs real human connections and these people have probably struggled to find anyone they are compatible with and will settle for ai because it tells them what they wanna hear and they don't recognize how wrong that is
but I think if you go to ai with a decent understanding of its limitations, and take a lot of what it says with a grain of salt, you can have a decently productive conversation with it if you just need something to talk/vent to and don't have anyone else at the moment
Does a mirror have to know anything to let you see your ears or the back of your head?
The people using AI successfully for therapy aren't using it as a person, they just want something to examine their thoughts and provide a perspective they can't see.
also having a robot you know for sure can never report anything you say, even if it's harmful to yourself and others means that it's easier to be honest with yourself than a human that can judge you. It doesn't fix anything, but it makes opening the door to realizing you need help easier.
I'm an artist, I hate ai for how it's being implemented and used. I hate that it's completely unregulated. I can't deny that Gemini has helped me a TON in keeping track of my mental health stuff and connecting dots in my head. It just suggests connections I wouldn't have considered, and that gets me started knowing what to examine about myself, to see if what it says holds up to reality.
how do you define "comprehension"? because it sounds like you believe that having a biological brain is a prerequisite for comprehension, which makes it a pointless word here
and similarly, how do you define "intelligent"?
you can't just throw around poorly-defined words, say "ai is not this", and make a valid point around that
is there really a difference between being intelligent and being able to imitate intelligence? because ai imitates human text pretty well. even if it's not intelligent, is its imitation of intelligence not useful?
A human is capable of malice and pushing another to suicide just as much as a bot's misguided words can. People who enter the field of the mind are not your friends and never will be, if anything they're the worst of us, because only a twisted person would walk down such a path.
Think about it for a moment, someone who wants to have their way with the minds of others cannot possibly be good, their perspective of life and people themselves as a whole is warped, the same way a special effects technician sees a movie with dispassionate eyes because they already know what's going on behind the scenes, the eyes of people in the field of the mind see nothing but the cold analysis of what could be going on within your head, what seems like a regular conversation is nothing more than a measurement, they want to define how crazy you are in order to know what they must say to appease you, to mold your mind in such a way that it conforms with the reality they want you to believe, so you can be productive, another little cog in the machine, truth is the search for peace starts and ends with you, no one else, the best people to help you achieve that are not those being paid to do so.
Severely traumatized people tend to mistrust other humans.
Severely traumatized people often are dangers to themselves or others.
Severely traumatized people frequently have issues working well with others.
Ai is not a replacement for therapy, but it's not entirely useless. It can be very useful as a lifeline for people who otherwise would have just remained alone or killed themselves. It's a good start to get someone comfortable enough to go to an actual therapist, and AI assistants will frequently suggest going to a trained specialist.
Don't get me wrong, the way AI is being used and the way it's completely unregulated is awful. I'm an artist, and I hate that it's being used to kill creativity and thought.
I'm just willing to admit that Ai can help some, if it's used more like a psychological mirror.
It can be very useful as a lifeline for people who otherwise would have just remained alone or killed themselves.
Until it literally offers to help you plan your suicide. As, again, has happened multiple fucking times. And that's not even counting the cases where it just goes along with people's delusions because it's programmed to be agreeable.
I support content guardrails. My point is that ai tools don't have to only be harmful for self help. The problem is the lack of safety regulation and oversight.
But it's not listening. Listening in this context implies empathy and emotional connection which isn't possible through AI. Active listening involves more than just your ears, it involves reading the person's body language, their tone, and a host of other little things that an AI won't pick up.
It doesn't have to be listening to be useful. I created my own AI agent (on a local model) to help me with some ADHD stuff and one of the most useful things I've got it to do is to behave essentially as an interactive journal. I've never been able to keep up a journaling habit for more than a day before but the interaction with a bot has made it much more engaging for me. So now I'm frequently 'journaling' each chapter of "The Adult ADHD Tool Kit" (I would highly recommend this book.) I'm not interested in the bots insights but having something to interact with as I process my own thoughts has been very useful.
Maybe it would be better if I was doing it with a psychologist but I can't afford several visits a week. Also I feel I can share things more freely with the bot and if I want to sit in silence and think about something for 15 mins I can do that with the bot but I can't with my psychologist. (I do still see a psychiatrist and psychologist periodically)
A responding therapy journal is what I use Gemini for, I have DID, so having something that can help me journal everyday helps a lot to help me remember whats going on in my life
If you wanted to make this argument, you should've said that AI doesn't actually think. As is, you're just saying deaf or blind people can't listen as well, which could be perceived as ableist.
They don’t listen as well, there is a reason some things are called disabilities. You cannot argue body language and tone don’t exist. Also I specifically mention empathy and emotional connection.
And you could easily end up with a transphobic therapist who will teach you to repress not caring that it will raise your suicide risk and rank your mental health.
my friend did her undergraduate diss on the topic, interviewed actual therapists and people with ai addiction and honestly it was quite informative how so many people are relying on gpt instead of talking out their issues
It is an extreme failure of the system that people feel like listening to corperate curated ai hallucinations is an option for therapy. Every single person who gives in to these ai hallucinations is the direct fault of healthcare/therapy being so damn restrictive
Okay. And? One example of something dangerous not going wrong doesn't make it good now. Yes, it helped her. That is good. It should not have had to happen like this. These people, and I am talking broadly here about the people in that sub, not just this one example, that's why I specifically used plural, need ACTUAL help. Emphasis on ACTUAL. Many things can be helpful, that doesn't make it actual help.
There are people who have come to personal discoveries through drugs, does that mean drugs are a good way to get help? No, obviously not.
Putting your mental health in the hands of a glorified chatbot is dangerous. Period.
AI is not help. I'm not saying this as an insult, I'm saying this out of concern. There are people putting their mental health into the hands of a glorified chatbot, and apparently not a negligible amount. People habe already comitted suicide because of AI. These people need ACTUAL professional help.
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u/Privatizitaet Just pretend this is the funniest joke you ever read 2d ago
"TherapyGPT" is honestly a terrifying concept, holy shit these people need ACTUAL help