5 ms·

For many people ChatGPT is already the smartest relationship they have in their lives, not sure how long we have until it’s the most fulfilling. On the upside i

For many people ChatGPT is already the smartest relationship they have in their lives, not sure how long we have until it’s the most fulfilling. On the upside it is plausible that ChatGPT can get to a state where it can act as a good therapist and help helpless who otherwise would not get help. I am more regularly finding myself in discussions where the other person believes they’re right because they have ChatGPT in their corner. I think most smart people overestimate the intelligence of others for a variety of reasons so they overestimate what it would take for a LLM to beat the output of an average person.

taurath 1y ago
I think that most smart people underestimate the complexity of fields they aren’t in. ChatGPT may be able to replace a psychology listicle, but it has no affect or ability to read, respond, and intervene or redirect like a human can.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  Underestimating the complexity of other fields is not mutually exclusive with overestimating the intelligence of others. The real issue is that society is very stratified so smart people are less likely to interact with regular people, especially in circumstances where the intelligence of the regular person could become obvious. I don’t see there being an insurmountable barrier that would prevent LLMs from doing the things you suggest it cannot. So even assuming you are correct for now I would suggest that LLMs will improve. My estimations don’t come from my assumption that other people’s jobs are easy, they come from doing applied research in behavioral analytics on mountains of data in rather large data centers.
  - svieira 1y ago
    Do you presume that "what people do" is "what they should do"?
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      If you are suggesting that people shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of the jobs of others - my answer is a strong yes. People should strive for accuracy in all cases. But I did suggest that even if true it does not negate my assertion so I am failing to see the relevance. Perhaps I have misunderstood your point.
      - svieira 1y ago
        Sorry, I was rather obscure - you said "My estimations don’t come from my assumption that other people’s jobs are easy, they come from doing applied research in behavioral analytics on mountains of data in rather large data centers." And so I considered the preceding discussion in light of your last sentence. Which makes it sound like you are saying "I've observed the behavior of people and they're often flawed and foolish, regardless of the high ideals they claim to be striving for and the education they think they have. Therefore, they will do better with ChatGPT as a companion than with a real human being". But that's quite a few words that you may not have intended, for which I apologize! What did you mean?
        cjbgkagh 1y ago
        It wasn't that I observed them being foolish but many behaviors are subtly linked to intelligence and can be combined to create a proxy IQ. It also helps when people search their SAT scores. I noted that the people I typically interact with are much higher IQ than I had expected which incorrectly skewed my believe of the average higher. I noticed that other high IQ individuals were making the same assumptions. I had very much underestimated how little I interact with regular people. I think we're already finding out that people are doing better with ChatGPT than with their peers, not all peers are created equal, and they can ask ChatGPT things that they cannot ask their peers. I think this trend will continue to the point that most people will prefer discussing things with ChatGPT than with their peers. Given what I know I predict this is a choice many people will make, I'm not passing judgment on that, it's a choice I've also made and I'm fortunate enough to have better peers than most.
  - fallinditch 1y ago
    > So even assuming you are correct for now I would suggest that LLMs will improve Yes, and when we can all wear smart glasses the ways we use them will become increasingly influential in our daily lives: a conversational voice assistant that is visually monitoring our surroundings, helping with decision making (including micro decisions), coaching, carrying out our instructions, etc.
  - taurath 1y ago
    Most human intelligence is within a fairly narrow band. Most people I’ve ever met have their own unique intelligences. Perhaps it might be good to meet more people without holding the self-looping dichotomy of “smart people” vs “normal people”. In my experience it tends to lead to huge cognitive errors.
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      As mentioned I’m in the rather unique position to have analyzed the complete browser history for a substantial number of people - I have learned far more than I wished to. The behaviors of very high IQ people are rather distinct from regular IQ people due to IQ being both largely generic and those genes having other comorbidities. Most obviously is the depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorders. This is so obvious that even regular researchers have uncovered it. I think what happens to many people is they confuse their desired reality with actual reality by looking at everything through a tinted lens. In being a data scientist in pursuit of actual reality I’ve had my desired reality repeatedly challenged far more than a person not in this industry. My desired reality was that intelligence was more common and I believed that until it was shown to me in data that I was wrong.
      - taurath 1y ago
        What gets me the most about this is how certain you are that because you have some data about people’s browser history you can make these conclusions. I hope age and experience avails you of these notions - there is no master database that will tell you the nature of people. All you have is the data you have - I’m sure there are many interesting insights and confounding results, but it’s foolish to think you can know anyone from a database, or social media. Genetic comorbidities with IQ? You at least have a lot to learn about mental health as well if you’re using these as examples.
        cjbgkagh 1y ago
        I think it is you who is blinded by your prior biases. It's not that I have 'some data', it was a mountain of data, and it was my full time job to analyze it specifically for behavioral information with a number of other researchers also doing the same, and we'd compare notes with other research orgs in other companies. I have a feeling that I've thought about this topic far more than you have. At this point we'll just have to agree to disagree.
- philwelch 1y ago
  You’re comparing ChatGPT to an idealized example of a good human therapist when many actual therapists are either useless or even actively harmful to the mental health of their clients.
  - kergonath 1y ago
    But then, the fact that harmful therapist exist is not an excuse to make it worse. It’s an excuse to improve regulations. “Car accidents happen regardless of what we do, so YOLO and remove safety standards” is never going to fly.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      That is a messy one here in the US. Almost every time we attempt to increase regulations around medical stuff we end up increasing costs and consolidation making care even more unavailable.
    - philwelch 1y ago
      It’s easy to just say that the regulations should be improved. Very different to actually improve them. Therapy isn’t a mass produced engineered product like a car; if therapy was a mass produced engineered product, it would be an AI anyway. Materials science and structural engineering are far more mature and well-understood sciences than psychology, and you can’t just throw a crash test dummy into a therapist’s office and measure how damaged it gets. It’s also not really clear how such regulations could even work. The regulations we have now are basically the obvious ones around licensure that require people to go to the right schools and whatnot. And then you can lose your license if it turns out you’ve broken the big ethical rules. But at the end of the day, that only regulates who can call themselves a “therapist” and get listed in Psychology Today. Actually “doing” “therapy” is, ultimately, built on talking to someone about your problems in some way that is supposed to help you solve them. You don’t need a “therapist” to do that. You can do it with your friend or parent or pastor or bartender or guru or “life coach” and, as long as we live in a free country, nobody’s going to stop you. Sure, the people who are allowed to call themselves therapists have certain techniques and rules that make them different, but even if that was a guarantee of quality there’s no way to stop people from talking to someone other than a licensed therapist, and it would be kind of absurd and dystopian to even try. So let’s dispense of the notion that we are some sort of omniscient god-emperor who can just magically fix things with vague “regulations” and talk about the world as it actually exists. For a lot of people, I think that’s a world where talking about their personal issues with an LLM is arguably no worse than whatever other options they have. Maybe it’s not the equivalent of whatever amazing therapist you know or have or are or can imagine, but that’s not the therapist that everyone is going to get.
- ben_w 1y ago
  Both statements can be simultaneoulsy true. 45% of the US[0] have a degree, about 40% EU[1] graduate, and 54% of China[2] get at least a diploma from university. The best AI behave like someone fresh out of university without much real world experience. Personally, I use this as a way to stay humble: when the AI is teaching me fundamentals about some subject, my opinion about it can't possibly be very useful. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#General_attainment_of_degrees/diplomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... [1] https://euranetplus-inside.eu/eu-maps-what-proportion-of-young-europeans-are-graduates/ https://euranetplus-inside.eu/eu-maps-what-proportion-of-you... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_China#Challenges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_China#Chal...
- kergonath 1y ago
  > I think that most smart people underestimate the complexity of fields they aren’t in. And people deep in new technologies overestimate the potential effect of $new_tech_du_jour. You cannot solve a problem without understanding it and its reasons. And LLMs are not able to understand something.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    People have solved problems for most of history without understanding them. For example problems can be brute forced.
    - suddenlybananas 1y ago
      For example, "wild generalization that has no basis."
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      You cannot brute force a problem without understanding the problem I think you have mistaken "understanding the problem" with "knowing a solution to the problem"
      - hackable_sand 1y ago
        You can brute force a problem without understanding the problem.
        bluefirebrand 1y ago
        Would you be kind enough to give an example of this? I disagree, but I'm open to being convinced I just don't think you can solve a problem in any way without understanding it first, at least at a high level I think if you know a solution you want to reach then you can work backwards from it in a brute force way to reach the solution you want But I don't think you can take a problem where you aren't sure what the solution is and brute force the solution without understanding the problem
- treis 1y ago
  They definitely can. Here's an example when I tried it: Me: I'm struggling with some things today and feel like eating a bunch of food to make myself feel better. can we talk about it? Deepseek: Absolutely, I’m here to listen. It’s completely understandable to turn to food for comfort when you’re struggling—many people do. But if you’re open to it, we can explore what’s going on beneath the urge to eat emotionally. Would you like to share what’s weighing on you today? Sometimes just naming the feelings can take some of their power away. And if you’d rather not go into details, that’s okay too—we could brainstorm other ways to cope that might leave you feeling more nourished emotionally (and physically). Some gentle questions to consider (no pressure to answer all or any): - What’s the emotion you’re trying to soothe? (Loneliness? Stress? Sadness?) - If eating wasn’t an option, what’s one tiny thing that might bring you a moment of relief? (A hug? A walk? A favorite song?) You’re not alone in this. That's a really solid opening response and it kept doing well from there. I haven't tried a complex psychological issue but for the "I'm struggling and need someone to talk to" it does surprisingly well.
  - taurath 1y ago
    ChatGPT can’t be in the room with you. Can’t evoke psychological mirroring. Is AI going to cure loneliness? Will the AI be empathetic? Will it be capable of showing love? Can it give you the acceptance of another human being? Do these things matter if they’re simulated? Do these things matter at all? I don’t deny the helpfulness of LLMs on many aspects of therapy and mental health. I’ve used it myself. Relational problems (of which almost all mental health is a part) requires relational healing. I think we’re going to need to learn a lot more information about what being a human means, else we continue to in the name of business and financial efficiency lose something very important. I’m an optimist, but we have a lot of challenges ahead.
- istjohn 1y ago
  There are a lot of awful therapists out there. I wager that Claude Sonnet 3.7 given a suitable, straightforward system prompt would handily outperform non-doctoral degree therapists in a clinical trial, even if the humans had the advantage of in-person sessions.
  - taurath 1y ago
    I would want to bet against it but then we’d have to agree on what “performance” means. Also agree there are horrible therapists. The funny part about horrible therapists is that sometimes they can actually be extremely good for one population of people. Will AI be able to connect with all sorts of people? Will we have AI politicians (do we now?)? It’s sorta like saying AI will be a better friend. We’ll see about that - I don’t consider profit seeking enterprises to be my friend.
nsajko 1y ago
> it is plausible that ChatGPT can get to a state where it can act as a good therapist Be careful with that thought, it's a trap people have been falling into since the sixties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  Eventual plausibility is a suitably weak assertion, to refute it you would have to at least suggest that it is never possible which you have not done.
- diggan 1y ago
  I dunno, I feel like most people (probably not the typical HN user though) don't even think about their feelings, wants or anything else introspective on a regular basis. Maybe having something like ChatGPT available could be better than nothing, at least for people to start being at least a bit introspective, even if it's LLM-assisted. Maybe it gets a bit easier to ask questions that you feel are stigmatized, as you know (think) no other human will see it, just the robot that doesn't have feelings nor judge you. I agree that it probably won't replace a proper therapist/psychologist, but maybe it could at least be a small step to open up and start thinking?
  - kergonath 1y ago
    > I feel like most people (probably not the typical HN user though) don't even think about their feelings, wants or anything else introspective on a regular basis. Well, two things. First, no. People who engage on HN are a specific part of the population, with particular tendencies. But most of the people here are simply normal, so outside of the limits you consider. Most people with real social issues don’t engage in communities, virtual or otherwise. HN people are not special. Then, you cannot follow this kind of reasoning when thinking about a whole population. Even if people on average tend to behave one way, this leaves millions of people who would behave otherwise. You simply cannot optimise for the average and ignore the worst case in situations like this, because even very unlikely situations are bound to happen a lot. > Maybe having something like ChatGPT available could be better than nothing, at least for people to start being at least a bit introspective, even if it's LLM-assisted. It is worse than nothing. A LLM does not understand the situation or what people say to it. It cannot choose to, say, nudge someone in a specific direction, or imagine a way to make things better for someone. À LLM regresses towards the mean of its training set. For people who are already outside the main mode of the distribution, this is completely unhelpful, and potentially actively harmful. By design, a LLM won’t follow a path that was not beaten in its training data. Most of them are actually biased to make their user happy and validate what we tell them rather than get off that path. It just does not work. > I agree that it probably won't replace a proper therapist/psychologist, but maybe it could at least be a small step to open up and start thinking? In my experience, not any more than reading a book would. Future AI models might get there, I don’t think their incompetence is a law of nature. But current LLM are particularly harmful for people who are in a dicey psychological situation already.
itchyjunk 1y ago
For a subset of topics, "AI" is already what I prefer to interact with over humans. At times, it's nicer to start with "AI" and kind of ground my messy thoughts before interacting with people and that works better than directly starting with a person. I'm also starting to come across people who say "You should ask these types of questions to AI first" answer. But this is no different than people who preached "lmfgt" kind of religiously. Even when I prefer to start with humans, some humans prompt me to start by prompting AI.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  I see the same. I'm waiting on LLMs to get good enough that I can use them to help me learn foreign languages - e.g. talk to me about the news in language X. This way I can learn a language in an interesting and interactive way without burdening some poor human with my mistakes. I would build this myself but others will probably beat me too it.
  - croemer 1y ago
    LLMs are already good enough to tell you the news in language X and listen to your broken attempts at asking questions back. Or what's missing?
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      They do seem close to being able to, I'm mostly waiting on someone to provide it as a service - I don't have time for side projects ATM.
      - istjohn 1y ago
        It's not a project. Just open Claude or ChatGPT and tell it what you want to do. You could copy/paste your comment above. If you want to get slightly more fancy, use Google's AIStudio with a simple system prompt.
        1y ago
alickz 1y ago
>I think most smart people overestimate the intelligence of others for a variety of reasons so they overestimate what it would take for a LLM to beat the output of an average person. I think most people also _vastly_ overestimate how much positive attention the average person gets in their lives It wouldn't surprise me if, for most people, ChatGPT offers them more empathy and understanding than _anyone_ else _ever has_, at least on a consistent basis. That kind of indefatigable emotional labor is just not feasible for most, even on a very short term basis, even for those with large support networks We can argue over whether or not it's "real" empathy, but I don't believe we can argue with the emotions of our attention starved brothers and sisters
- codr7 1y ago
  It's a pretty sucky solution to that problem imo, and I can see a substantial risk that it causes people to withdraw even more from real relations.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    One concern that I do worry about is if LLMs are able to present an false attractive view of the world that the user will become increasingly dependent on the LLMs to maintain that view. A cult of 1. Reminds me of the episode 'Safe Space' from South Park but instead of Butters filtering content it'll be the LLM. People are already divorced enough from reality - but I see no reason why they couldn't be more divorced, at least temporarily.
    - danenania 1y ago
      It begs the question of who decides what “reality” is though. A lot of people have an unrealistically negative view of themselves and their abilities—often based on spending time around pessimistic or small-minded humans. In that case, if an AI increases someone’s confidence in themselves, you could say it’s giving them a stronger sense of reality by helping them to question distorted and self-limiting beliefs.
      - 1y ago

taurath 1y ago

I think that most smart people underestimate the complexity of fields they aren’t in. ChatGPT may be able to replace a psychology listicle, but it has no affect or ability to read, respond, and intervene or redirect like a human can.

cjbgkagh 1y ago
Underestimating the complexity of other fields is not mutually exclusive with overestimating the intelligence of others. The real issue is that society is very stratified so smart people are less likely to interact with regular people, especially in circumstances where the intelligence of the regular person could become obvious. I don’t see there being an insurmountable barrier that would prevent LLMs from doing the things you suggest it cannot. So even assuming you are correct for now I would suggest that LLMs will improve. My estimations don’t come from my assumption that other people’s jobs are easy, they come from doing applied research in behavioral analytics on mountains of data in rather large data centers.
- svieira 1y ago
  Do you presume that "what people do" is "what they should do"?
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    If you are suggesting that people shouldn't underestimate the difficulty of the jobs of others - my answer is a strong yes. People should strive for accuracy in all cases. But I did suggest that even if true it does not negate my assertion so I am failing to see the relevance. Perhaps I have misunderstood your point.
    - svieira 1y ago
      Sorry, I was rather obscure - you said "My estimations don’t come from my assumption that other people’s jobs are easy, they come from doing applied research in behavioral analytics on mountains of data in rather large data centers." And so I considered the preceding discussion in light of your last sentence. Which makes it sound like you are saying "I've observed the behavior of people and they're often flawed and foolish, regardless of the high ideals they claim to be striving for and the education they think they have. Therefore, they will do better with ChatGPT as a companion than with a real human being". But that's quite a few words that you may not have intended, for which I apologize! What did you mean?
      - cjbgkagh 1y ago
        It wasn't that I observed them being foolish but many behaviors are subtly linked to intelligence and can be combined to create a proxy IQ. It also helps when people search their SAT scores. I noted that the people I typically interact with are much higher IQ than I had expected which incorrectly skewed my believe of the average higher. I noticed that other high IQ individuals were making the same assumptions. I had very much underestimated how little I interact with regular people. I think we're already finding out that people are doing better with ChatGPT than with their peers, not all peers are created equal, and they can ask ChatGPT things that they cannot ask their peers. I think this trend will continue to the point that most people will prefer discussing things with ChatGPT than with their peers. Given what I know I predict this is a choice many people will make, I'm not passing judgment on that, it's a choice I've also made and I'm fortunate enough to have better peers than most.
- fallinditch 1y ago
  > So even assuming you are correct for now I would suggest that LLMs will improve Yes, and when we can all wear smart glasses the ways we use them will become increasingly influential in our daily lives: a conversational voice assistant that is visually monitoring our surroundings, helping with decision making (including micro decisions), coaching, carrying out our instructions, etc.
- taurath 1y ago
  Most human intelligence is within a fairly narrow band. Most people I’ve ever met have their own unique intelligences. Perhaps it might be good to meet more people without holding the self-looping dichotomy of “smart people” vs “normal people”. In my experience it tends to lead to huge cognitive errors.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    As mentioned I’m in the rather unique position to have analyzed the complete browser history for a substantial number of people - I have learned far more than I wished to. The behaviors of very high IQ people are rather distinct from regular IQ people due to IQ being both largely generic and those genes having other comorbidities. Most obviously is the depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorders. This is so obvious that even regular researchers have uncovered it. I think what happens to many people is they confuse their desired reality with actual reality by looking at everything through a tinted lens. In being a data scientist in pursuit of actual reality I’ve had my desired reality repeatedly challenged far more than a person not in this industry. My desired reality was that intelligence was more common and I believed that until it was shown to me in data that I was wrong.
    - taurath 1y ago
      What gets me the most about this is how certain you are that because you have some data about people’s browser history you can make these conclusions. I hope age and experience avails you of these notions - there is no master database that will tell you the nature of people. All you have is the data you have - I’m sure there are many interesting insights and confounding results, but it’s foolish to think you can know anyone from a database, or social media. Genetic comorbidities with IQ? You at least have a lot to learn about mental health as well if you’re using these as examples.
      - cjbgkagh 1y ago
        I think it is you who is blinded by your prior biases. It's not that I have 'some data', it was a mountain of data, and it was my full time job to analyze it specifically for behavioral information with a number of other researchers also doing the same, and we'd compare notes with other research orgs in other companies. I have a feeling that I've thought about this topic far more than you have. At this point we'll just have to agree to disagree.
philwelch 1y ago
You’re comparing ChatGPT to an idealized example of a good human therapist when many actual therapists are either useless or even actively harmful to the mental health of their clients.
- kergonath 1y ago
  But then, the fact that harmful therapist exist is not an excuse to make it worse. It’s an excuse to improve regulations. “Car accidents happen regardless of what we do, so YOLO and remove safety standards” is never going to fly.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    That is a messy one here in the US. Almost every time we attempt to increase regulations around medical stuff we end up increasing costs and consolidation making care even more unavailable.
  - philwelch 1y ago
    It’s easy to just say that the regulations should be improved. Very different to actually improve them. Therapy isn’t a mass produced engineered product like a car; if therapy was a mass produced engineered product, it would be an AI anyway. Materials science and structural engineering are far more mature and well-understood sciences than psychology, and you can’t just throw a crash test dummy into a therapist’s office and measure how damaged it gets. It’s also not really clear how such regulations could even work. The regulations we have now are basically the obvious ones around licensure that require people to go to the right schools and whatnot. And then you can lose your license if it turns out you’ve broken the big ethical rules. But at the end of the day, that only regulates who can call themselves a “therapist” and get listed in Psychology Today. Actually “doing” “therapy” is, ultimately, built on talking to someone about your problems in some way that is supposed to help you solve them. You don’t need a “therapist” to do that. You can do it with your friend or parent or pastor or bartender or guru or “life coach” and, as long as we live in a free country, nobody’s going to stop you. Sure, the people who are allowed to call themselves therapists have certain techniques and rules that make them different, but even if that was a guarantee of quality there’s no way to stop people from talking to someone other than a licensed therapist, and it would be kind of absurd and dystopian to even try. So let’s dispense of the notion that we are some sort of omniscient god-emperor who can just magically fix things with vague “regulations” and talk about the world as it actually exists. For a lot of people, I think that’s a world where talking about their personal issues with an LLM is arguably no worse than whatever other options they have. Maybe it’s not the equivalent of whatever amazing therapist you know or have or are or can imagine, but that’s not the therapist that everyone is going to get.
ben_w 1y ago
Both statements can be simultaneoulsy true. 45% of the US[0] have a degree, about 40% EU[1] graduate, and 54% of China[2] get at least a diploma from university. The best AI behave like someone fresh out of university without much real world experience. Personally, I use this as a way to stay humble: when the AI is teaching me fundamentals about some subject, my opinion about it can't possibly be very useful. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States#General_attainment_of_degrees/diplomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... [1] https://euranetplus-inside.eu/eu-maps-what-proportion-of-young-europeans-are-graduates/ https://euranetplus-inside.eu/eu-maps-what-proportion-of-you... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_China#Challenges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_China#Chal...
kergonath 1y ago
> I think that most smart people underestimate the complexity of fields they aren’t in. And people deep in new technologies overestimate the potential effect of $new_tech_du_jour. You cannot solve a problem without understanding it and its reasons. And LLMs are not able to understand something.
- pixl97 1y ago
  People have solved problems for most of history without understanding them. For example problems can be brute forced.
  - suddenlybananas 1y ago
    For example, "wild generalization that has no basis."
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    You cannot brute force a problem without understanding the problem I think you have mistaken "understanding the problem" with "knowing a solution to the problem"
    - hackable_sand 1y ago
      You can brute force a problem without understanding the problem.
      - bluefirebrand 1y ago
        Would you be kind enough to give an example of this? I disagree, but I'm open to being convinced I just don't think you can solve a problem in any way without understanding it first, at least at a high level I think if you know a solution you want to reach then you can work backwards from it in a brute force way to reach the solution you want But I don't think you can take a problem where you aren't sure what the solution is and brute force the solution without understanding the problem
treis 1y ago
They definitely can. Here's an example when I tried it: Me: I'm struggling with some things today and feel like eating a bunch of food to make myself feel better. can we talk about it? Deepseek: Absolutely, I’m here to listen. It’s completely understandable to turn to food for comfort when you’re struggling—many people do. But if you’re open to it, we can explore what’s going on beneath the urge to eat emotionally. Would you like to share what’s weighing on you today? Sometimes just naming the feelings can take some of their power away. And if you’d rather not go into details, that’s okay too—we could brainstorm other ways to cope that might leave you feeling more nourished emotionally (and physically). Some gentle questions to consider (no pressure to answer all or any): - What’s the emotion you’re trying to soothe? (Loneliness? Stress? Sadness?) - If eating wasn’t an option, what’s one tiny thing that might bring you a moment of relief? (A hug? A walk? A favorite song?) You’re not alone in this. That's a really solid opening response and it kept doing well from there. I haven't tried a complex psychological issue but for the "I'm struggling and need someone to talk to" it does surprisingly well.
- taurath 1y ago
  ChatGPT can’t be in the room with you. Can’t evoke psychological mirroring. Is AI going to cure loneliness? Will the AI be empathetic? Will it be capable of showing love? Can it give you the acceptance of another human being? Do these things matter if they’re simulated? Do these things matter at all? I don’t deny the helpfulness of LLMs on many aspects of therapy and mental health. I’ve used it myself. Relational problems (of which almost all mental health is a part) requires relational healing. I think we’re going to need to learn a lot more information about what being a human means, else we continue to in the name of business and financial efficiency lose something very important. I’m an optimist, but we have a lot of challenges ahead.
istjohn 1y ago
There are a lot of awful therapists out there. I wager that Claude Sonnet 3.7 given a suitable, straightforward system prompt would handily outperform non-doctoral degree therapists in a clinical trial, even if the humans had the advantage of in-person sessions.
- taurath 1y ago
  I would want to bet against it but then we’d have to agree on what “performance” means. Also agree there are horrible therapists. The funny part about horrible therapists is that sometimes they can actually be extremely good for one population of people. Will AI be able to connect with all sorts of people? Will we have AI politicians (do we now?)? It’s sorta like saying AI will be a better friend. We’ll see about that - I don’t consider profit seeking enterprises to be my friend.

nsajko 1y ago

> it is plausible that ChatGPT can get to a state where it can act as a good therapist Be careful with that thought, it's a trap people have been falling into since the sixties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

cjbgkagh 1y ago
Eventual plausibility is a suitably weak assertion, to refute it you would have to at least suggest that it is never possible which you have not done.
diggan 1y ago
I dunno, I feel like most people (probably not the typical HN user though) don't even think about their feelings, wants or anything else introspective on a regular basis. Maybe having something like ChatGPT available could be better than nothing, at least for people to start being at least a bit introspective, even if it's LLM-assisted. Maybe it gets a bit easier to ask questions that you feel are stigmatized, as you know (think) no other human will see it, just the robot that doesn't have feelings nor judge you. I agree that it probably won't replace a proper therapist/psychologist, but maybe it could at least be a small step to open up and start thinking?
- kergonath 1y ago
  > I feel like most people (probably not the typical HN user though) don't even think about their feelings, wants or anything else introspective on a regular basis. Well, two things. First, no. People who engage on HN are a specific part of the population, with particular tendencies. But most of the people here are simply normal, so outside of the limits you consider. Most people with real social issues don’t engage in communities, virtual or otherwise. HN people are not special. Then, you cannot follow this kind of reasoning when thinking about a whole population. Even if people on average tend to behave one way, this leaves millions of people who would behave otherwise. You simply cannot optimise for the average and ignore the worst case in situations like this, because even very unlikely situations are bound to happen a lot. > Maybe having something like ChatGPT available could be better than nothing, at least for people to start being at least a bit introspective, even if it's LLM-assisted. It is worse than nothing. A LLM does not understand the situation or what people say to it. It cannot choose to, say, nudge someone in a specific direction, or imagine a way to make things better for someone. À LLM regresses towards the mean of its training set. For people who are already outside the main mode of the distribution, this is completely unhelpful, and potentially actively harmful. By design, a LLM won’t follow a path that was not beaten in its training data. Most of them are actually biased to make their user happy and validate what we tell them rather than get off that path. It just does not work. > I agree that it probably won't replace a proper therapist/psychologist, but maybe it could at least be a small step to open up and start thinking? In my experience, not any more than reading a book would. Future AI models might get there, I don’t think their incompetence is a law of nature. But current LLM are particularly harmful for people who are in a dicey psychological situation already.

itchyjunk 1y ago

For a subset of topics, "AI" is already what I prefer to interact with over humans. At times, it's nicer to start with "AI" and kind of ground my messy thoughts before interacting with people and that works better than directly starting with a person. I'm also starting to come across people who say "You should ask these types of questions to AI first" answer. But this is no different than people who preached "lmfgt" kind of religiously. Even when I prefer to start with humans, some humans prompt me to start by prompting AI.

cjbgkagh 1y ago
I see the same. I'm waiting on LLMs to get good enough that I can use them to help me learn foreign languages - e.g. talk to me about the news in language X. This way I can learn a language in an interesting and interactive way without burdening some poor human with my mistakes. I would build this myself but others will probably beat me too it.
- croemer 1y ago
  LLMs are already good enough to tell you the news in language X and listen to your broken attempts at asking questions back. Or what's missing?
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    They do seem close to being able to, I'm mostly waiting on someone to provide it as a service - I don't have time for side projects ATM.
    - istjohn 1y ago
      It's not a project. Just open Claude or ChatGPT and tell it what you want to do. You could copy/paste your comment above. If you want to get slightly more fancy, use Google's AIStudio with a simple system prompt.
      - 1y ago

alickz 1y ago

>I think most smart people overestimate the intelligence of others for a variety of reasons so they overestimate what it would take for a LLM to beat the output of an average person. I think most people also _vastly_ overestimate how much positive attention the average person gets in their lives It wouldn't surprise me if, for most people, ChatGPT offers them more empathy and understanding than _anyone_ else _ever has_, at least on a consistent basis. That kind of indefatigable emotional labor is just not feasible for most, even on a very short term basis, even for those with large support networks We can argue over whether or not it's "real" empathy, but I don't believe we can argue with the emotions of our attention starved brothers and sisters

codr7 1y ago
It's a pretty sucky solution to that problem imo, and I can see a substantial risk that it causes people to withdraw even more from real relations.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  One concern that I do worry about is if LLMs are able to present an false attractive view of the world that the user will become increasingly dependent on the LLMs to maintain that view. A cult of 1. Reminds me of the episode 'Safe Space' from South Park but instead of Butters filtering content it'll be the LLM. People are already divorced enough from reality - but I see no reason why they couldn't be more divorced, at least temporarily.
  - danenania 1y ago
    It begs the question of who decides what “reality” is though. A lot of people have an unrealistically negative view of themselves and their abilities—often based on spending time around pessimistic or small-minded humans. In that case, if an AI increases someone’s confidence in themselves, you could say it’s giving them a stronger sense of reality by helping them to question distorted and self-limiting beliefs.
    - 1y ago