4 ms·

The article goes on to state that the rugpull on their AI girlfriends meant that a sub-Reddit dedicated to the Replika AI has a permanently stickied thread abou

The article goes on to state that the rugpull on their AI girlfriends meant that a sub-Reddit dedicated to the Replika AI has a permanently stickied thread about resources for mental health and suicide hotlines. I'd rather people didn't kill themselves, personally.

serf 4y ago
>I'd rather people didn't kill themselves, personally. well then you need both sides of the picture. Is there a degree of loneliness staved off by these services? Does that help to reduce suicides? It's easy to say "people killed themselves because X shutdown", it's more difficult to say "X existing is preventing suicides" without more research. I tend to believe that if people who would consider suicide otherwise are distracted by something along the path then perhaps that is a good thing. It could very well be that this served as a distraction for those folks, rather than being the cause itself.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Then you need to see it for what it is: a band-aid and not a solution.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    And this is one of those situations where you don't go tearing off bandages without sutures in hand. Something not being a complete solution is not a good argument for eliminating it, until such a solution exists.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    Most of mental health treatment is a band-aid, and this is true anywhere in the world & no matter how much money you have. Causes are often unknown and when treatment like medications work we often don't know why they work.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      The implication here isn't that the treatment is a band-aid, it's that an LLM being an acceptable substitution for not being able to access a real human therapist due to money is a band-aid on a flawed healthcare system. Like so many people on HN, they want to throw technological solutions at social problems.

4 ms·

The article goes on to state that the rugpull on their AI girlfriends meant that a sub-Reddit dedicated to the Replika AI has a permanently stickied thread abou

by hammyhavoc 4y ago

serf 4y ago
>I'd rather people didn't kill themselves, personally. well then you need both sides of the picture. Is there a degree of loneliness staved off by these services? Does that help to reduce suicides? It's easy to say "people killed themselves because X shutdown", it's more difficult to say "X existing is preventing suicides" without more research. I tend to believe that if people who would consider suicide otherwise are distracted by something along the path then perhaps that is a good thing. It could very well be that this served as a distraction for those folks, rather than being the cause itself.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Then you need to see it for what it is: a band-aid and not a solution.
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    And this is one of those situations where you don't go tearing off bandages without sutures in hand. Something not being a complete solution is not a good argument for eliminating it, until such a solution exists.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    Most of mental health treatment is a band-aid, and this is true anywhere in the world & no matter how much money you have. Causes are often unknown and when treatment like medications work we often don't know why they work.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      The implication here isn't that the treatment is a band-aid, it's that an LLM being an acceptable substitution for not being able to access a real human therapist due to money is a band-aid on a flawed healthcare system. Like so many people on HN, they want to throw technological solutions at social problems.