5 ms·

The concept is right on point though: ChatGPT is excellent at writing "fluffy" pieces full of empathy, compassion, PR talk, politician speech, and any other wo

The concept is right on point though: ChatGPT is excellent at writing "fluffy" pieces full of empathy, compassion, PR talk, politician speech, and any other wordy flavor you need. As an engineer who is unable to produce such writing, this tool is quite helpful!

throwaway426079 3y ago
That makes sense assuming engineers don't need to practice this skill very often. But doctors need to do fluffy, compassionate every shift. Nothing about the story makes sense. Doctors and nurses say these kinds of things to patients every day (I'm an EMT, I've watched them do it and I do it myself). I'm seriously wondering if the relatives were responding to the fact that the clinician was visibly reading from a piece of paper and that somehow made it more 'official'.
bemusedthrow75 3y ago
Empathy and compassion isn't in the words. It's in the intent behind them. Faked empathy literally isn't empathy. (Fake compassion is a little more arguable; there are clearly situations where faked compassion is better than no compassion.) Not everyone needs this or can do this on the same scale. I have really had to learn to find empathy and be unafraid of it, and I definitely have nearly zero tact (if you have no tact, you practise thinking good things). But if you need to be able to practise empathy and compassion regularly, and you are incapable of it, find someone who can to that for you. Celebrate their ability to do it and you'll benefit from it yourself. Trade them something they don't do so well.
firebirdn99 3y ago
Many comments are saying it's helpful. But what happens when it's widespread, everyone crafting Hallmark type empathic messages to everyone. Or once everyone has bots, then most likely they will all be sent straight to spam or something. We will be inundated with such messaging.
- suoduandao2 3y ago
  "Chatgpt, write an email based on these bullet points!" "Chatgpt, summarize this email into a few bullet points!" Somehow, I doubt we'll notice. The reason we don't send the bullet points email today is that the receiver will think we're angry with them. In University the engineers all needed alcohol as a social lubricant, if chatgpt replaces it I expect we'll trade hangovers for higher electricity bills and carry on.
- fastball 3y ago
  And? What is wrong with being inundated with empathy?
  - Levitz 3y ago
    It's not actual empathy. It's writing that seems empathic. The problem is that, exposed to enough writing that seems empathic but isn't, a person will learn that empathic writing is not sincere. We lose that as a society in the same way that if I check my email and see a "YOU'VE WON" subject I don't get excited, because I know it's fake. Do we really want that? A world in which when you see an empathic message, the first thing you think of is that it's fake? I find the idea to be quite sad.
    - fastball 3y ago
      You say that as if it is known fact but I don't think that is a given at all. The converse could be true: maybe being inundated with fake empathy is almost as good as being inundated with the real thing, ala placebo effect (or the studies which have shown that just forcing yourself to smile can actually improve your mood).
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    It isn't necessarily sincere.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  I look forward to AI-generated sappy Hallmark-like messages, because they're bound to be better written than the same types of messages most humans write today. The sentiment will be no less fake. It'll just be better written.
lynx23 3y ago
PR talk and political speech, I agree. I wouldn't call this fabricated shit "empathy" or "compassion", for both, you need a little more then a LLM fine-tuned by SV lefties. In fact, whenever ChatGPT tried to be empathic, it feels very pathetic.
basisword 3y ago
Helpful until someone reading your “writing” realises it’s AI and that you’re a robot who needs AI to write something with empathy or compassion. I’d much rather hear someone’s really voice in their writing than something false. It reminds me of people in certain places who are fake nice and fake positive 100% of the time. It’s draining to be around them.
- dkarras 3y ago
  It is also draining to be around people that always require feeling heard and validated or else they get crabby. Two sides to everything. The doc in this story probably does not require AI to write something compassionate. He simply does not have the bandwidth to do it while juggling critical patients and their family while they are not taking no for an answer and insisting on inappropriate treatment.
  - firebirdn99 3y ago
    Isn't that why there are nurses, or maybe we need in-between positions of people who actually do the diagnosis, surgery, and those to explain them. Wait, those are nurses?
    - dkarras 3y ago
      In a more scheduled hospital / care setting, yes. In ER care setting (the example in the article), it is a lot more chaotic. Disseminating care information to people further down / up the hierarchy takes time that they might not have.
rpastuszak 3y ago
> ChatGPT is excellent at writing "fluffy" pieces full of empathy, compassion, PR talk, politician speech, I think you're putting a bunch of completely different things in the same basket. Making the text more fluffy will not make it more empathetic, not only (but mainly) because there isn't anyone to empathise with the respondent. Our bullshit receptors are good spotting dishonesty, so it'll just sound cringe, putting it at the same level as PR talk. But that's not empathy or compassion, just cheap and obvious packaging. > As an engineer who is unable to produce such writing, this tool is quite helpful! I genuinely thought you were being sarcastic here. Of course you are and you don't need to use more filler words for that. I do think that there's value in using GPT for training purposes here, that is learning how one could express themselves in a more context appropriate way. This is not much different from stylistic advice, e.g. in many languages a one word yes/no response to a question is considered neutral, whereas in English it can be considered rude/abrupt, so people use question tags more often.
- dkarras 3y ago
  >Making the text more fluffy will not make it more empathetic, Of course not, but empathy in communication (not in action) is full of fluff. It almost requires it. >Our bullshit receptors are good spotting dishonesty, so it'll just sound cringe All "genuine" affirmation for the sake of empathy sounds cringe to me. I'd rather the doctor devoted their time to doing their job well instead of trying to make someone feel heard and validated - especially in an ER scenario where they are juggling critical patients. This tech can help with that.
  - misnome 3y ago
    > I'd rather the doctor devoted their time to doing their job well instead of trying to make someone feel heard and validated Not doing this can make the job actively harder.
    - dkarras 3y ago
      Depending on the situation, can make it actively harder as well. Do I spend the time to verbally fluff up the relative of a patient or go and tend to 5+ other patients that need critical care right now (the example in this article)? If the first one is expected of me, care suffers and the job is harder. I am not dismissing the needs the relative of patient has, don't get me wrong. But in an ER setting it rarely is the priority. If some tech makes it easier to more effectively give that need some additional bandwidth, that is a good thing.
rpastuszak 3y ago
Reading the comments I realised that: - people are having two separate conversations: one about empathy, another about an empathetic-sounding style - many commenters use different definitions of empathy and compassion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy
- err4nt 3y ago
  This touches on something, the same reason that "I'm sorry" apologies should not be written by chatbots - for some things it's most important that a human being did something, more than what they did. When a big mistake has happened and you need to apologize, it had better be coming from you yourself. If you think you can improve it by delegating it to a fancy autocorrect software, you're missing the point of why we apologize. Or if you think a bot is more 'empathetic' than a human paying attention, you've lost touch with what it means to be empathetic. A bot can't even feel, let alone feel your situation vicariously.
EGreg 3y ago
Apparently that’s what you need to secure funding for your startups: https://www.zdnet.com/article/gpt-4-generated-pitches-are-3x-more-likely-to-secure-funding-than-human-ones/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/gpt-4-generated-pitches-are-3x...

throwaway426079 3y ago

That makes sense assuming engineers don't need to practice this skill very often. But doctors need to do fluffy, compassionate every shift. Nothing about the story makes sense. Doctors and nurses say these kinds of things to patients every day (I'm an EMT, I've watched them do it and I do it myself). I'm seriously wondering if the relatives were responding to the fact that the clinician was visibly reading from a piece of paper and that somehow made it more 'official'.

bemusedthrow75 3y ago

Empathy and compassion isn't in the words. It's in the intent behind them. Faked empathy literally isn't empathy. (Fake compassion is a little more arguable; there are clearly situations where faked compassion is better than no compassion.) Not everyone needs this or can do this on the same scale. I have really had to learn to find empathy and be unafraid of it, and I definitely have nearly zero tact (if you have no tact, you practise thinking good things). But if you need to be able to practise empathy and compassion regularly, and you are incapable of it, find someone who can to that for you. Celebrate their ability to do it and you'll benefit from it yourself. Trade them something they don't do so well.

firebirdn99 3y ago

Many comments are saying it's helpful. But what happens when it's widespread, everyone crafting Hallmark type empathic messages to everyone. Or once everyone has bots, then most likely they will all be sent straight to spam or something. We will be inundated with such messaging.

suoduandao2 3y ago
"Chatgpt, write an email based on these bullet points!" "Chatgpt, summarize this email into a few bullet points!" Somehow, I doubt we'll notice. The reason we don't send the bullet points email today is that the receiver will think we're angry with them. In University the engineers all needed alcohol as a social lubricant, if chatgpt replaces it I expect we'll trade hangovers for higher electricity bills and carry on.
fastball 3y ago
And? What is wrong with being inundated with empathy?
- Levitz 3y ago
  It's not actual empathy. It's writing that seems empathic. The problem is that, exposed to enough writing that seems empathic but isn't, a person will learn that empathic writing is not sincere. We lose that as a society in the same way that if I check my email and see a "YOU'VE WON" subject I don't get excited, because I know it's fake. Do we really want that? A world in which when you see an empathic message, the first thing you think of is that it's fake? I find the idea to be quite sad.
  - fastball 3y ago
    You say that as if it is known fact but I don't think that is a given at all. The converse could be true: maybe being inundated with fake empathy is almost as good as being inundated with the real thing, ala placebo effect (or the studies which have shown that just forcing yourself to smile can actually improve your mood).
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  It isn't necessarily sincere.
pmoriarty 3y ago
I look forward to AI-generated sappy Hallmark-like messages, because they're bound to be better written than the same types of messages most humans write today. The sentiment will be no less fake. It'll just be better written.

lynx23 3y ago

PR talk and political speech, I agree. I wouldn't call this fabricated shit "empathy" or "compassion", for both, you need a little more then a LLM fine-tuned by SV lefties. In fact, whenever ChatGPT tried to be empathic, it feels very pathetic.

basisword 3y ago

Helpful until someone reading your “writing” realises it’s AI and that you’re a robot who needs AI to write something with empathy or compassion. I’d much rather hear someone’s really voice in their writing than something false. It reminds me of people in certain places who are fake nice and fake positive 100% of the time. It’s draining to be around them.

dkarras 3y ago
It is also draining to be around people that always require feeling heard and validated or else they get crabby. Two sides to everything. The doc in this story probably does not require AI to write something compassionate. He simply does not have the bandwidth to do it while juggling critical patients and their family while they are not taking no for an answer and insisting on inappropriate treatment.
- firebirdn99 3y ago
  Isn't that why there are nurses, or maybe we need in-between positions of people who actually do the diagnosis, surgery, and those to explain them. Wait, those are nurses?
  - dkarras 3y ago
    In a more scheduled hospital / care setting, yes. In ER care setting (the example in the article), it is a lot more chaotic. Disseminating care information to people further down / up the hierarchy takes time that they might not have.

rpastuszak 3y ago

> ChatGPT is excellent at writing "fluffy" pieces full of empathy, compassion, PR talk, politician speech, I think you're putting a bunch of completely different things in the same basket. Making the text more fluffy will not make it more empathetic, not only (but mainly) because there isn't anyone to empathise with the respondent. Our bullshit receptors are good spotting dishonesty, so it'll just sound cringe, putting it at the same level as PR talk. But that's not empathy or compassion, just cheap and obvious packaging. > As an engineer who is unable to produce such writing, this tool is quite helpful! I genuinely thought you were being sarcastic here. Of course you are and you don't need to use more filler words for that. I do think that there's value in using GPT for training purposes here, that is learning how one could express themselves in a more context appropriate way. This is not much different from stylistic advice, e.g. in many languages a one word yes/no response to a question is considered neutral, whereas in English it can be considered rude/abrupt, so people use question tags more often.

dkarras 3y ago
>Making the text more fluffy will not make it more empathetic, Of course not, but empathy in communication (not in action) is full of fluff. It almost requires it. >Our bullshit receptors are good spotting dishonesty, so it'll just sound cringe All "genuine" affirmation for the sake of empathy sounds cringe to me. I'd rather the doctor devoted their time to doing their job well instead of trying to make someone feel heard and validated - especially in an ER scenario where they are juggling critical patients. This tech can help with that.
- misnome 3y ago
  > I'd rather the doctor devoted their time to doing their job well instead of trying to make someone feel heard and validated Not doing this can make the job actively harder.
  - dkarras 3y ago
    Depending on the situation, can make it actively harder as well. Do I spend the time to verbally fluff up the relative of a patient or go and tend to 5+ other patients that need critical care right now (the example in this article)? If the first one is expected of me, care suffers and the job is harder. I am not dismissing the needs the relative of patient has, don't get me wrong. But in an ER setting it rarely is the priority. If some tech makes it easier to more effectively give that need some additional bandwidth, that is a good thing.

rpastuszak 3y ago

Reading the comments I realised that: - people are having two separate conversations: one about empathy, another about an empathetic-sounding style - many commenters use different definitions of empathy and compassion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy

err4nt 3y ago
This touches on something, the same reason that "I'm sorry" apologies should not be written by chatbots - for some things it's most important that a human being did something, more than what they did. When a big mistake has happened and you need to apologize, it had better be coming from you yourself. If you think you can improve it by delegating it to a fancy autocorrect software, you're missing the point of why we apologize. Or if you think a bot is more 'empathetic' than a human paying attention, you've lost touch with what it means to be empathetic. A bot can't even feel, let alone feel your situation vicariously.

EGreg 3y ago

Apparently that’s what you need to secure funding for your startups: https://www.zdnet.com/article/gpt-4-generated-pitches-are-3x-more-likely-to-secure-funding-than-human-ones/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/gpt-4-generated-pitches-are-3x...