9 ms·

Yeah, I think Claude is a lot more logical in that sense, I use it for some therapy sessions myself and it pushes back a bit more than Open AI and Gemini

Forgeties79 6mo ago
I would be very careful doing this
- potatoskins 6mo ago
  You always have to be careful with LLMs, but to be fair, I felt like Claude is such a good therapist, at least it is good to start with if you want to unpack yourself. I have been to 3 short human therapist sessions in my life, and I only felt some kind of genuine self-improvement and progress with Claude.
  - QuiDortDine 6mo ago
    And how do you draw the line between feeling progress and actually making progress?
    - layer8 6mo ago
      The same way you distinguish between feeling like having a problem and actually having a problem.
      - Forgeties79 6mo ago
        This is needlessly flippant and not really the same thing. Determining progress in a therapy setting is usually a collaborative effort between the therapist and the client. An LLM is not a reliable agent to make that determination.
        layer8 6mo ago
        I didn’t claim that an LLM is that, and I fully agree that it is not. I’m saying that one is inherently one’s own judge of whether one has a problem. You go to a therapist when you feel you have a problem that warrants it. You stop going when you feel you don’t have it anymore. And OP is very likely assessing their progress in the same way. I wasn’t being flippant if the parent was asking a genuine question.
        Forgeties79 6mo ago
        > I’m saying that one is inherently one’s own judge of whether one has a problem. You go to a therapist when you feel you have a problem that warrants it That is for certain types of therapy/clinical care. It is not always - and often isn’t - the case. Plenty of diagnoses and care protocols are not a matter of opinion or based on “you feeling there’s an issue” or deciding on your own there is no longer an issue.
        logifail 6mo ago
        > Determining progress in a therapy setting is usually a collaborative effort between the therapist and the client. An LLM is not a reliable agent to make that determination Can anyone describe how to determine how a (professional, human) therapist is "a reliable agent" to make such a determination?
        Forgeties79 6mo ago
        If you want to call into question the entire field of behavioral health and the training that is involved then that is fine, but if that’s how you feel then this entire discussion is really about something different and I can’t bridge the gap here.
        mlrtime 6mo ago
        The thing they have in common is that they will both go forever.... Meaning neither the LLM or the licensed therapist will voluntarily say, you are healed, you don't need me anymore.
    - moduspol 6mo ago
      Counter-point: I often raise the same question of people with human therapists. I do not get strong responses.
      - Forgeties79 6mo ago
        An LLM is completely unable to make that determination. They can’t even see you. So much information is lost when it’s text-only. Where are you often asking this question/getting these weak responses?
        moduspol 6mo ago
        You don't ask the therapist. You ask the person seeking therapy.
- shimman 6mo ago
  You can't be careful at all doing this, this is like smoking a cigarette in a dynamite factory. Using LLMs for therapy is so deeply dystopian and disgusting, people need human empathy for therapy. LLMs do not emit empathy. Complete disaster waiting to happen for that individual.
  - DrewADesign 6mo ago
    Using an LLM for therapy is like using an iPad as an all-purpose child attention pacifier. Sure, it’s convenient. Sure there’s no immediate harm. Why a stressed parent would be attracted to the idea is obvious… and of course it’s a terrible idea.
    - wiseowise 6mo ago
      Using LLM for therapy is like using iPad as a study assistance. It doesn’t replace your work.
      - DrewADesign 6mo ago
        It’s nothing like that. Using an iPad for study assistance is a conduit to many credible sources and tools. They can be evaluated using context, reputation, reviews, etc. An LLM generates non-deterministic information using sources you can’t even know, let alone evaluate, and is more primed to agree with you than give critical and objective evaluation. It is, at best, like asking your closest parent to help you through difficult interpersonal situations: The interaction is probably, subconsciously, going to be skewed enough towards soothing you that you just can’t consider it objective. The difference is that with an LLM, that’s deliberate. It’s designed in.
  - astrange 6mo ago
    Claudes have lots of empathy. The issue is the opposite - it isn't very good at challenging you and it's not capable of independently verifying you're not bullshitting it or lying about your own situation. But it's better than talking to yourself or an abuser!
- mettamage 6mo ago
  In my experience, one also needs to be careful with actual therapists
kortilla 6mo ago
Don’t call them therapy sessions. They kind of look like it but ultimately these are smoke blowing machines, which is very far from what a therapist would do.
- saghm 6mo ago
  Six decades later and we're still trying to explain to people the same things[1]: > Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
- mlrtime 6mo ago
  People generalize "therapy" all the time. I [half] jokingly tell people that a nice drive in a 911 [can be] better/cheaper therapy that going to a PhD.
borski 6mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47395779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47395779
throw4847285 6mo ago
I'm starting to fear that LLMs are especially popular with people who can't call a doctor's office to make an appointment or tell a waiter they brought the wrong food. I struggle with those things, but I know that it's better to push myself outside of my comfort zone. Are LLMs mainly a tool for people with atrophying social skills who want all interaction to happen via a text prompt that always responds in the most soothing way? I can't think of another reason to replace human therapy with an LLM.

Forgeties79 6mo ago

I would be very careful doing this

potatoskins 6mo ago
You always have to be careful with LLMs, but to be fair, I felt like Claude is such a good therapist, at least it is good to start with if you want to unpack yourself. I have been to 3 short human therapist sessions in my life, and I only felt some kind of genuine self-improvement and progress with Claude.
- QuiDortDine 6mo ago
  And how do you draw the line between feeling progress and actually making progress?
  - layer8 6mo ago
    The same way you distinguish between feeling like having a problem and actually having a problem.
    - Forgeties79 6mo ago
      This is needlessly flippant and not really the same thing. Determining progress in a therapy setting is usually a collaborative effort between the therapist and the client. An LLM is not a reliable agent to make that determination.
      - layer8 6mo ago
        I didn’t claim that an LLM is that, and I fully agree that it is not. I’m saying that one is inherently one’s own judge of whether one has a problem. You go to a therapist when you feel you have a problem that warrants it. You stop going when you feel you don’t have it anymore. And OP is very likely assessing their progress in the same way. I wasn’t being flippant if the parent was asking a genuine question.
        Forgeties79 6mo ago
        > I’m saying that one is inherently one’s own judge of whether one has a problem. You go to a therapist when you feel you have a problem that warrants it That is for certain types of therapy/clinical care. It is not always - and often isn’t - the case. Plenty of diagnoses and care protocols are not a matter of opinion or based on “you feeling there’s an issue” or deciding on your own there is no longer an issue.
      - logifail 6mo ago
        > Determining progress in a therapy setting is usually a collaborative effort between the therapist and the client. An LLM is not a reliable agent to make that determination Can anyone describe how to determine how a (professional, human) therapist is "a reliable agent" to make such a determination?
        Forgeties79 6mo ago
        If you want to call into question the entire field of behavioral health and the training that is involved then that is fine, but if that’s how you feel then this entire discussion is really about something different and I can’t bridge the gap here.
      - mlrtime 6mo ago
        The thing they have in common is that they will both go forever.... Meaning neither the LLM or the licensed therapist will voluntarily say, you are healed, you don't need me anymore.
  - moduspol 6mo ago
    Counter-point: I often raise the same question of people with human therapists. I do not get strong responses.
    - Forgeties79 6mo ago
      An LLM is completely unable to make that determination. They can’t even see you. So much information is lost when it’s text-only. Where are you often asking this question/getting these weak responses?
      - moduspol 6mo ago
        You don't ask the therapist. You ask the person seeking therapy.
shimman 6mo ago
You can't be careful at all doing this, this is like smoking a cigarette in a dynamite factory. Using LLMs for therapy is so deeply dystopian and disgusting, people need human empathy for therapy. LLMs do not emit empathy. Complete disaster waiting to happen for that individual.
- DrewADesign 6mo ago
  Using an LLM for therapy is like using an iPad as an all-purpose child attention pacifier. Sure, it’s convenient. Sure there’s no immediate harm. Why a stressed parent would be attracted to the idea is obvious… and of course it’s a terrible idea.
  - wiseowise 6mo ago
    Using LLM for therapy is like using iPad as a study assistance. It doesn’t replace your work.
    - DrewADesign 6mo ago
      It’s nothing like that. Using an iPad for study assistance is a conduit to many credible sources and tools. They can be evaluated using context, reputation, reviews, etc. An LLM generates non-deterministic information using sources you can’t even know, let alone evaluate, and is more primed to agree with you than give critical and objective evaluation. It is, at best, like asking your closest parent to help you through difficult interpersonal situations: The interaction is probably, subconsciously, going to be skewed enough towards soothing you that you just can’t consider it objective. The difference is that with an LLM, that’s deliberate. It’s designed in.
- astrange 6mo ago
  Claudes have lots of empathy. The issue is the opposite - it isn't very good at challenging you and it's not capable of independently verifying you're not bullshitting it or lying about your own situation. But it's better than talking to yourself or an abuser!
mettamage 6mo ago
In my experience, one also needs to be careful with actual therapists

kortilla 6mo ago

Don’t call them therapy sessions. They kind of look like it but ultimately these are smoke blowing machines, which is very far from what a therapist would do.

saghm 6mo ago
Six decades later and we're still trying to explain to people the same things[1]: > Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
mlrtime 6mo ago
People generalize "therapy" all the time. I [half] jokingly tell people that a nice drive in a 911 [can be] better/cheaper therapy that going to a PhD.

borski 6mo ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47395779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47395779

throw4847285 6mo ago

I'm starting to fear that LLMs are especially popular with people who can't call a doctor's office to make an appointment or tell a waiter they brought the wrong food. I struggle with those things, but I know that it's better to push myself outside of my comfort zone. Are LLMs mainly a tool for people with atrophying social skills who want all interaction to happen via a text prompt that always responds in the most soothing way? I can't think of another reason to replace human therapy with an LLM.