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I am bipolar and I help run a group. We lost some people to chatbots already that either fueled a manic or a depressive episode.
by BoredPositron 1y ago
I am bipolar and I help run a group. We lost some people to chatbots already that either fueled a manic or a depressive episode.
- sherdil2022 1y agoLost as in ‘not meeting anymore since they are using chatbots instead’ or ‘took their lives’?
- BoredPositron 1y agoBoth but it's mostly not the therapy chatbots or normal "chatgpt" those are worse enough. It's these dumbass ai girlfriend/boyfriend bots that run on uncensored small models. They get unhinged really fast.
- irjustin 1y agoThat's SUPER interesting because obviously the researchers didn't look here first. That even if "therapy chatbots" were fixed, you'd still have a massive space where the true problem is. On the ground, it's wildly different. For me, a very left field moment.
- wongarsu 1y agoI see a lot of ads for girlfriend chatbots, either blatant or with all kinds of thin disguises (the last ad I remember was a "personal assistant who will do anything", but "therapy" is also a popular framing). In comparison I barely see or hear anything about professional not-sexy therapy chatbots. I imagine if you go to psychology conferences you get exposed to the professional side a lot more, but for the average internet user that's very different. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI girlfriend sites had many, many orders of magnitude more users
- ethan_smith 1y agoThis matches what several mental health professionals I know have reported - AI chatbots tend to validate rather than appropriately challenge potentially harmful thought patterns during mood episodes.
- bravesoul2 1y agoThat level of anecdata makes me think this is a huge problem when scaled to the whole world.