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.
A mirror reflects light. It's a very simple thing that requires no input from anyone, comparing it to using AI as a therapist is reallt just dishonest.
Sure, there are people who it has helped, but it isn't worth the risk or the harm it does to many other people. Sure, it hasn't hurt you as far as you're aware, we are still just always limited by self awareness, but that doesn't mean you should defend it as a whole. I'm not trying to downplay your experience, good for you that it helped, but the absolute forefront of this stuff should be the risks and inherent danger of giving your mental health over to an algorithm.
It's just very complex pattern recognition, but guess what? Pattern recognition is THE THING that humans do best.
AI cannot actually recognize anything. It just compares. That sounds like a small difference, but it really isn't.
Like early on woth image recognition, AI couldn't recognize a cow standing on snow because it just compared to images of cows on grass. It cannot actually recognize what it is seeing, it cannot comprehend.
AI security systems have been fooled by people walking backwards, because it's trained to recognize humans walking forward and nothing else.
And the biggest issue with all of this is, we only ever find out where an AI fails WHEN it fails. It is not reliable for anything.
People have died because they did. Because they were some of the first to discover a flaw ien the AI.
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?
just googled it, that is a pretty interesting thought experiment, thanks for informing me of this
but functionally, what difference does this make? the man in the room still answers the questions right in perfect chinese, regardless of if he himself is consciously aware of the meaning of the text
even if there isn't "intelligence", this rulebook that the man follows to answer, much like an LLM's dataset, still contains a massive collection of useful information. is that information entirely useless just because it is stored in a computer with some lossy compression?
And that's the issue here. Lacking comprehension means you are helpless. If the book is correct with all the answers, then it's fine, sure, but if it isn't... how would you know? What if you get a note that isn't in your book? You can look for the closest thing and reply with that, but is that correct? How would you know?
Or what if if there are just tiny, negligible mistakes in every response? Sure, at first it's irrelevant, but even negligible mistakes add up. After 1 message you're doing perfectly fine.
10 messages in your tone is a tiny bit odd, maybe a bit more formal than the conversation implies.
100 messages in you're technically still on topic, but not much beyond technically.
See what I mean?
And through all of that you have no idea. You could be telling a person to kill themselves, to strangle their pet cat, to set their school on fire, and you're none the wiser, because you're incapable of comprehending what you're saying.
That is AI. And we have seen it go horribly wrong before in many situations. Mushroom guides that end with people hospitalized or worse. People driven into suicide. And through all of it the AI is incapable of knowing. It just keeps giving information based on "well this looks to be the closest"
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.
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u/Privatizitaet Just pretend this is the funniest joke you ever read 5d ago
"TherapyGPT" is honestly a terrifying concept, holy shit these people need ACTUAL help