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I think what some people are missing is that the alternative to GPT therapy is often nothing. If I have a problem rattling around in my head at 2 am, I can't ea

I think what some people are missing is that the alternative to GPT therapy is often nothing. If I have a problem rattling around in my head at 2 am, I can't easily talk to a therapist. And the problem would have to be pretty serious for me to go through the effort and expense of establishing a relationship with a therapist if I don't already have one. Sometimes I just want to talk to another being that speaks in the first person and has a basic memory of previous conversations (even if that memory is just the length of a context window). Human therapists don't usually operate on a "walk in and tell me the thing you want to talk about" model. There is a whole onboarding process and an expectation that you'll discuss a range of issues. Personally, I don't consider many of my problems to be worth all of that. Even calling a close friend seems like something I would only do if I felt the issue was really, really important. Talking to ChatGPT, on the other hand, is as low stakes as it gets. It'll offer incredibly generic advice without passing judgement or burdening another human with my problems. I can be as trivial and repetitive as a I want. It's just a language model. The privacy considerations are real. OpenAI has my name, email and phone number. But if a reputable organization that I trusted with my privacy offered a similar service (ie, a national psychiatric organization), I would almost consider it.

notahacker 4y ago
> I think what some people are missing is that the alternative to GPT therapy is often nothing. If I have a problem rattling around in my head at 2 am, I can't easily talk to a therapist. Can't speak for every country, but in the UK you can call 116 123 and speak to the Samaritans. They're not professional therapists but they are trained to be nice and to listen to people unburdening themselves and trying to make decisions. And yes, they're there at 2am. Also, they're people, so they understand you as a fellow person with emotions, not as a correlation between this text input and that text output. I realise some people might actually prefer the lower stakes of the generic machine output. But the people service does - at least in some places - exist.

notahacker 4y ago

> I think what some people are missing is that the alternative to GPT therapy is often nothing. If I have a problem rattling around in my head at 2 am, I can't easily talk to a therapist. Can't speak for every country, but in the UK you can call 116 123 and speak to the Samaritans. They're not professional therapists but they are trained to be nice and to listen to people unburdening themselves and trying to make decisions. And yes, they're there at 2am. Also, they're people, so they understand you as a fellow person with emotions, not as a correlation between this text input and that text output. I realise some people might actually prefer the lower stakes of the generic machine output. But the people service does - at least in some places - exist.