5 ms·

It's a bit like talking about the quality of pastoral care you get at Church. You can get a wide spectrum of results. Worth pointing out such systems have surv

It's a bit like talking about the quality of pastoral care you get at Church. You can get a wide spectrum of results. Worth pointing out such systems have survived a long long time since access to it is free irrespective of the quality.

aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
mlinhares 1y ago
You'll never get the attention of your priest at the same level as a chatbot. Not even close, this is a whole new universe.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  I'd argue chatbots give zero actual attention since they're not human (other than in the irrelevant technical sense.) Saying they can is a bit like saying a character in a book or an imaginary friend can. It will probably take a few years for the general public to fully appreciate what that means.
  - mlinhares 1y ago
    Doesn't matter what we think, this is how people are perceiving them :(
  - Terr_ 1y ago
    > attention Then perhaps "responsiveness", even if misinterpreted as attention. In a similar way to the responsiveness of a casino slot-machine.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > It will probably take a few years for the general public to fully appreciate what that means I think you are very optimistic if you think the general public will ever fully understand what it means As these get more sophisticated, the general public will be less and less capable of navigating these new tools in a healthy and balanced fashion
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- djtango 1y ago
  Assuming we are comparing ChatGPT to an in person therapist, there's a whole universe of extra signals ChatGPT is not privy to. Tone of voice, cadence of speech, time to think, reformulated responses, body language. These are all CRUCIAL data points that trained professionals also take cues from. An AI can also be trained on these but I don't think we're close to that yet AFAIK as an outsider. People in need of therapy could (and probably are) unreliable narrators and a therapist's job is to manage long range context and specialist training to manage that.
  - Bluestein 1y ago
    > don't think we're close to that yet AFAIK as an outsider. I was gonna say: Wait until LLMs start vectorizing to sentiment, inflection and other "non content" information, and matching that to labeled points, somehow ... ... if they ain't already.-
    - djtango 1y ago
      I am curious how this will work in the wild. I believe the capability will exist but with things like body language and facial expressions, it can be really subtle and even if it's possible, I think that run of the mill consumer hardware will not be high fidelity enough and will bring in too much noise. This reminds me of the story of how McDonald's abandoned automated drive thru voice input because in the wild there was too many uncontrolled variables but speech recognition has been a "solved problem" for a long time now... EDIT I recently had issues trying to biometrically verify my face for a service and after 20-30 failed attempts to get my face recognised I was locked out of the service so sensor-related services are a still a bit of a murky world
- interestica 1y ago
  ConfessionGPT?
AdieuToLogic 1y ago
> It's a bit like talking about the quality of pastoral care you get at Church. No, no it isn't. Whatever you think about the role of pastor (or any other therapy-related profession), they are humans which possess intrinsic aptitudes a statistical text (token) generator simply does not have.
- ta8645 1y ago
  A human may also possess malevolent tendencies that a silicon intelligence lacks. The question is not if they are equals, the question is if their differences matter to the endeavour of therapy. Maybe a human's superior hand-eye coordination matters, maybe it doesn't. Maybe a silicon agent's superior memory recall matters, maybe it doesn't. And so on.
  - AdieuToLogic 1y ago
    > A human may also possess malevolent tendencies that a silicon intelligence lacks. And an LLM may be trained on malevolent data of which a human is unaware. > The question is not if they are equals, the question is if their differences matter to the endeavour of therapy. I did not pose the question of equality and apologize if the following was ambiguous in any way: ... they are humans which possess intrinsic aptitudes a statistical text (token) generator simply does not have. Let me now clarify - "silicon" does not have capabilities humans have relevant to successfully performing therapy. Specifically, LLM's are not an equal to human therapists excluding the pathological cases identified above.
    - ta8645 1y ago
      > Let me now clarify - "silicon" does not have capabilities humans have relevant to successfully performing therapy. I think you're wrong, but that isn't really my point. A well-trained LLM that lacks any malevolent data, may well be better than a human psychopath who happens to have therapy credentials. And it may also be better than nothing at all for someone who is unable to reach a human therapist for one reason or another. For today, I'll agree with you, that the best human therapists that exist today, are better than the best silicon therapists that exist today. But I don't think that situation will persist any longer than such differences persisted in chess playing capabilities. Where for years I heard many people making the same mistake you're making, of saying that silicon could never demonstrate the flair and creativity of human chess players; that turned out to be false. It's simply human hubris to believe we possess capabilities that are impossible to duplicate in silicon.
jwe 1y ago
Not really. A pastor is hardly a trained mental health professional.

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

mlinhares 1y ago

You'll never get the attention of your priest at the same level as a chatbot. Not even close, this is a whole new universe.

mathiaspoint 1y ago
I'd argue chatbots give zero actual attention since they're not human (other than in the irrelevant technical sense.) Saying they can is a bit like saying a character in a book or an imaginary friend can. It will probably take a few years for the general public to fully appreciate what that means.
- mlinhares 1y ago
  Doesn't matter what we think, this is how people are perceiving them :(
- Terr_ 1y ago
  > attention Then perhaps "responsiveness", even if misinterpreted as attention. In a similar way to the responsiveness of a casino slot-machine.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > It will probably take a few years for the general public to fully appreciate what that means I think you are very optimistic if you think the general public will ever fully understand what it means As these get more sophisticated, the general public will be less and less capable of navigating these new tools in a healthy and balanced fashion
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
djtango 1y ago
Assuming we are comparing ChatGPT to an in person therapist, there's a whole universe of extra signals ChatGPT is not privy to. Tone of voice, cadence of speech, time to think, reformulated responses, body language. These are all CRUCIAL data points that trained professionals also take cues from. An AI can also be trained on these but I don't think we're close to that yet AFAIK as an outsider. People in need of therapy could (and probably are) unreliable narrators and a therapist's job is to manage long range context and specialist training to manage that.
- Bluestein 1y ago
  > don't think we're close to that yet AFAIK as an outsider. I was gonna say: Wait until LLMs start vectorizing to sentiment, inflection and other "non content" information, and matching that to labeled points, somehow ... ... if they ain't already.-
  - djtango 1y ago
    I am curious how this will work in the wild. I believe the capability will exist but with things like body language and facial expressions, it can be really subtle and even if it's possible, I think that run of the mill consumer hardware will not be high fidelity enough and will bring in too much noise. This reminds me of the story of how McDonald's abandoned automated drive thru voice input because in the wild there was too many uncontrolled variables but speech recognition has been a "solved problem" for a long time now... EDIT I recently had issues trying to biometrically verify my face for a service and after 20-30 failed attempts to get my face recognised I was locked out of the service so sensor-related services are a still a bit of a murky world
interestica 1y ago
ConfessionGPT?

AdieuToLogic 1y ago

> It's a bit like talking about the quality of pastoral care you get at Church. No, no it isn't. Whatever you think about the role of pastor (or any other therapy-related profession), they are humans which possess intrinsic aptitudes a statistical text (token) generator simply does not have.

ta8645 1y ago
A human may also possess malevolent tendencies that a silicon intelligence lacks. The question is not if they are equals, the question is if their differences matter to the endeavour of therapy. Maybe a human's superior hand-eye coordination matters, maybe it doesn't. Maybe a silicon agent's superior memory recall matters, maybe it doesn't. And so on.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago
  > A human may also possess malevolent tendencies that a silicon intelligence lacks. And an LLM may be trained on malevolent data of which a human is unaware. > The question is not if they are equals, the question is if their differences matter to the endeavour of therapy. I did not pose the question of equality and apologize if the following was ambiguous in any way: ... they are humans which possess intrinsic aptitudes a statistical text (token) generator simply does not have. Let me now clarify - "silicon" does not have capabilities humans have relevant to successfully performing therapy. Specifically, LLM's are not an equal to human therapists excluding the pathological cases identified above.
  - ta8645 1y ago
    > Let me now clarify - "silicon" does not have capabilities humans have relevant to successfully performing therapy. I think you're wrong, but that isn't really my point. A well-trained LLM that lacks any malevolent data, may well be better than a human psychopath who happens to have therapy credentials. And it may also be better than nothing at all for someone who is unable to reach a human therapist for one reason or another. For today, I'll agree with you, that the best human therapists that exist today, are better than the best silicon therapists that exist today. But I don't think that situation will persist any longer than such differences persisted in chess playing capabilities. Where for years I heard many people making the same mistake you're making, of saying that silicon could never demonstrate the flair and creativity of human chess players; that turned out to be false. It's simply human hubris to believe we possess capabilities that are impossible to duplicate in silicon.

jwe 1y ago

Not really. A pastor is hardly a trained mental health professional.