>Damn, we hardly know who our users are
No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.
>Damn, we hardly know who our users are
No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.
I would say misuse AI for mental health advice. It's already difficult to find good mental health professionals.
Unless you have Bill Gates money, you don't have access to a mental health professional (much less your mental health professional who knows your life situation) when a girlfriend dumps you over text at 1AM. And that's when you may need one most.
People want to talk to their therapist after an argument with their husband or when their boss fires them, not Friday after next.
Decent therapists advocate for cultivating resilience for such situations.
So do decent parents and friends.
Decent physicians do the same:
“And the next time you feel your heart going out of rhythm, just hold your breath, and remember I will see you again a couple of weeks from now.”
Ah wait, no they don’t, because “resilience” is a worthless concept in emergencies, both mental and physical.
The point is to try and limit what becomes an emergency in the first place. Having an argument with a spouse shouldn't necessitate an immediate call to a therapist.
And adjusting a curtain rod shouldn't necessitate a call to 911 and an ambulance ride to the hospital, but sometimes shit happens.
Decent physicians recommend exercise among other preventative measures to reduce the likelihood of emergencies.
Therapists will likewise encourage you to build up resilience so that "a relationship ended" is not a crisis, and also build support networks of real people who can really come visit you when you need urgent support.
There are also, of course, crisis hotlines.
>> Unless you have Bill Gates money, you don't have access to a mental health professional
I'm not sure where you live. I know almost all colleges in the US have walk in free mental health counseling, along with free telesupport. My company has onsite mental health professionals who you can talk to or call at any time. There are free mental health clinics all over my city. There's mental health professionals who did daily outreach with the homeless and addicts in our city.
This doesn't even start to list all of the available apps you can download from your health care provider for free resources that are available to you.
This might have been true 30-40 years ago, but even over the last decade during and after covid, healthcare providers have put a huge emphasis on mental health and counseling to give people an abundance of resources to help them - when they need help, not in four days when someone is available.
> I know almost all colleges in the US have walk in free mental health counseling
I've been to two universities and this was not the case from the university itself, especially outside of normal business hours. If you didn't have an emergency, you had to wait months, if you had an emergency (I was explicitly told the only way to see someone anytime soon was if I said I'd kill myself if I didn't get an appointment and then they'd see if there was someone available) you might be able to talk to someone sooner. After hours emergencies maybe the psych ward at the hospital would see you? There's free resources, but universities aren't really providing much.
"My company has onsite mental health professionals who you can talk to or call at any time."
Can't see that coming to bite you.
I do not have Bill Gates money but I think you're describing a friend more than a therapist. Finding anyone awake at 1AM is going to be hard, but even for Linus Torvald money you can find a therapist who will take a quick call in the morning.
In the olden days in these and other situations, you hit the bar, got shitfaced, told your lifes story to a bottle and maybe banged a geezer/cougar that happened to be there. Something like that.
Honestly I could go for a mental health cougar right about now.
I don’t think they’re free either
They buy you drinks you promise to leave before her teenaged sons wakeup
The need is not in question, the solution is. This annoying glaze machine is not it for mental health tasks.
Most people have friends and family to "glaze" them anyway. I don't see it as a major danger. Also, it's gotten better with the glazing lately anyway.
The danger is in the replacement. Confiding in others builds a web of trust. Talking about a break-up with a friend builds a relationship, and the next time that friend needs someone, they know you're an option. It's economics, borrowing and trading emotional support. AI as confidant destroys that economy.
Tens of millions of people disagree with you. What makes you think you know better than them what is right for them?
This line of reasoning doesn't hold up for many harmful habits that people voluntarily partake in. It's OK for someone to believe that using an AI as an approximate therapist might be a bad idea, especially in light of the many publicly documented cases of AI feeding delusional thoughts and encouraging suicide.
> This line of reasoning doesn't hold up for many harmful habits that people voluntarily partake in.
It absolutely does, you just believe you can decide for others what’s harmful for them.
Who's deciding for anybody?
The plethora of AI psychosis reports. The existence of my boyfriend is AI subreddit and almost all the content on it.
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Exactly why people turn to AI, which I think is good enough for "casual" mental health advice (the kind people can do themselves by reading self-help books or talking with empathic friends). Arguably it's safer than talking to strangers online because now that they've been doing it for a few years, they will (or should) have plenty of safeguards, unlike people on the internet who can talk out of their ass (like me!) and give bad advice. In theory the LLM will escalate or recommend professional help if they're out of their depth.
>In theory the LLM will escalate or recommend professional help if they're out of their depth.
Given there have been multiple suicides driven by LLMs. I really doubt that.
Fascinating perspective - any technology that has caused >0 deaths is a dead end and has no chance of improvement.
I'm sure the Torment Nexus can be improved.
> In theory the LLM will escalate or recommend professional help if they're out of their depth.
LLMs can barely identify gaps in their own software designs, and they are provably good at making software.
LLMs are also incredibly poor at recognizing that they're "out of their depth", especially when their context is already full of their attempts to do something.
In practice we know that LLMs have aided in suicide, so what they should do in theory doesn't matter.
And how many people can it be credited for saving from self harm? Probably countless more than it has harmed, if I had to bet.
Those two sentences seem to be a non-sequitor. Unavailability is one reason people would turn to AI. Ease of access is another.
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I've yet to find anybody in mental health profession who is "good", aside psychiatrists and their drug prescriptions. And that's only cause of gatekeeping drugs, not because they're good either.
The worst problem with mental health care is that there is no "you're better" metric. There is if your bone breaks and heal. There is for surgery of various things. But mental health seems to follow Parkinson's Law, and expands to the number of sessions available, whether it helps or not. And at X00$/session, yeah gets costly quick.
So if something trained on all psychiatric literature costs $20/month subscription, that's a substitute therapist. Whether it's clinically trained or not.
I’ve seen about 8 therapists and 3 coaches at various times in the last 15 years. 5-6/8 and 2/3 respectively were, I eventually realized, mostly in it for the money and didn’t actually care too much (if at all) about me making any positive changes permanent. It wasn’t all bad; having someone confidential to talk to is in itself valuable, but the cost/benefit ratio is not at all consistent.
With that kind of benchmark comparison, it’s not all that hard for AI to present some kind of favorable value proposition, even if also inconsistent but with a harder ceiling on the upside.