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Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#31

Post by lukev »

wisty wrote: post #25

As far as I can tell, a lot of therapy is just good common-sense advice and a bunch of 'tricks' to get the patient to actually follow it. Basically CBT and "get the patient to think they figured out the solution themselves (develop insight)". Yes, there's some serious cases where more is required and a few (ADHD) where meds are effective; but a lot of the time the patient is just an expert at rejecting helpful advice…

I agree with your conclusion, but what you characterize as therapy is quite a small part of what it is (or can be, there's lots of different kinds.)

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#32

Post by metalman »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #9
metalman wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Since you are referencing 42, let me draw from another piece of literature to respond. “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” It's not the machines themselves that are inherently tyrannical, it's the human will to dominate now supercharge by technology. LLM hallucinations aside, unregulated artificia…

awwwhhhh!, I was enjoying the so close almostness of our current wrangles with what we are building compared to our literary greats imaginings on the subject. my personal suspicion is that the whole AI phenominon will exacerbate an already frenetic time of change in how humans live, here AI, will I think become a defining test of good judgement and compitency, like having a fun but sometimes dangerous and evil friend, who never goes away, for everybody....heres your AI, it bites sometimes, NEXT!

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#33

Post by hinkley »

lukev wrote: post #8

Good. It's difficult to imagine a worse use case for LLMs.

Especially given the other conversation that happened this morning.

The more you tell an AI not to obsess about a thing, the more they obsess about it. So trying to make a model that will never tell people to self harm is futile.

Though maybe we are just doing in wrong, and the self-filtering should be external filtering - one model to censor results that do not fit, and one to generate results with lighter self-censorship.

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#34

Post by [deleted] »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #6
kemotep wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is banning claiming your AI is a licensed therapist in the State of Illinois. If you have a court order to attend therapy for drug abuse related reasons you can’t just use ChatGPT according to this law.

It's also banning licensed therapists from using AI. FTA: > Licensed therapists in Illinois are now forbidden from using AI to make treatment decisions or communicate with clients, though they can still use AI for administrative tasks Your doctor can diagnose your cancer with AI, but your therapist can't diagnose your ADHD with AI. Stupid law is stupid.

[deleted]

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#36

Post by wizzwizz4 »

perlgeek wrote: post #19
lukev wrote: post #8

Good. It's difficult to imagine a worse use case for LLMs.

Just using an LLM as is for therapy, maybe with an extra prompt, is a terrible idea. On the other hand, I could image some more narrow uses where an LLM could help. For example, in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, there are different methods that are pretty prescriptive, like identifying cognitive distortions in negative thoughts. It's not too hard to imagine an app where you enter a negative thought on your own and exe…

> and a specifically trained LLM

Expert system. You want an expert system. For example, a database mapping "what patients write" to "what patients need to hear", a fuzzy search tool with properly-chosen thresholding, and a conversational interface (repeats back to you, paraphrased – i.e., the match target –, and if you say "yes", provides the advice).

We've had the tech to do this for years. Maybe nobody had the idea, maybe they tried it and it didn't work, but training an LLM to even approach competence at this task would be way more effort than just making an expert system, and wouldn't work as well.

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#37

Post by lupire »

germinalphrase wrote: post #30
romanows wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but also "An... entity may not provide... therapy... to the public unless the therapy... services are conducted by... a licensed professional". It's not obvious to me as a non-lawyer whether a chat history could be decided to be "therapy" in a courtroom. If so, this could count as a violation. Probably lots of law around this stuff for lawyers and doctors cornered into giving advice at parties already that might…

Functionally, it probably amounts to two restrictions: a chatbot cannot formally diagnose & a chatbot cannot bill insurance companies for services rendered.

Most "therapy" services are not providing a diagnosis. Diagnosis comes from an evaluation before therapy starts, or sometimes not at all. (You can pay to talk to someone without a diagnosis.)

The prohibition is mainly on accepting any payment for advertised therapy service, if not following the rules of therapy (licensure, AI guidelines).

Likewise for medicine and law.

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#38

Post by turnsout »

hathawsh wrote: post #13

Here is what Illinois says: https://idfpr.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idfpr/news... I get the impression that it is now illegal in Illinois to claim that an AI chatbot can take the place of a licensed therapist or counselor. That doesn't mean people can't do what they want with AI. It only means that counseling services can't offer AI as a cheaper replacement for a real person. Am I wrong? This sounds good to…

It does sound good (especially as an Illinois resident). Luckily, as far as I can tell, this is a proactive legislation. I don't think there are any startups out there promoting their LLM-based chatbot as a replacement for a therapist, or attempting to bill payers for service.

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#39

Post by codedokode »

vessenes wrote: post #21
zoeysmithe wrote: post #12

I was just reading about a suicide tied to AI chatbot 'therapy' uses. This stuff is a nightmare scenario for the vulnerable.

If you want to feel worried, check the Altman AMA on reddit. A lottttt of people have a parasocial relationship with 4o. Not encouraging.

Why OpenAI doesn't block the chatbot from participating in such conversations?

Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

#40

Post by jacobsenscott »

lukev wrote: post #8

Good. It's difficult to imagine a worse use case for LLMs.

It's already happening, a lot. I don't think anyone is claiming an llm is a therapist, but people use chatgpt for therapy every day. As far as I know no LLM company is taking any steps to prevent this - but they could, and should be forced to. It must be a goldmine of personal information.

I can't imagine some therapists, especially remote only, aren't already just acting as a human interface to chatgtp as well.

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