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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

#51

Post by randall »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #44

What if it works a third as well as a therapists but is 20 times cheaper? What word should we use for that?

i’ve had a huge amount of trauma in my life and i find myself using chat gpt as kind of a cheater coach thing where i know i’m feeling a certain way, i know it’s irrational, and i don’t really need to reflect on why it’s happening or how i can fix it, and i think for that it’s perfect.

a lot of people use therapists as sounding boards, which actually isn’t the best use of therapy imo.

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

#52

Post by beanshadow »

Often participants in discussions adjacent to this one err by speaking in time-absolute terms. Many of our judgments about LLMs are true about today's LLMs. Quotes like,

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

Is true today, but likely not true for technology we may still refer to as LLMs in the future.

The error is in building faulty preconceptions. These drip into the general public and these first impressions stifle industries.

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

#55

Post by ipaddr »

_se wrote: post #45
mensetmanusman wrote: post #44

What if it works a third as well as a therapists but is 20 times cheaper? What word should we use for that?

"A really fucking bad idea"? It's not one word, but it is the most apt description.

What if it works 20x better. For examples cases of patients being afraid of talking to professionals I could see this working much better.

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

#57

Post by dingnuts »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #40
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.

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

Are you joking? Any medical professional caught doing this should lose their license.

I would be incensed if I was a patient in this situation, and would litigate. What you're describing is literal malpractice.

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

#58

Post by singleshot_ »

davidthewatson wrote: post #47

Define "AI therapy". AFAICT, it's undefined in the Illinois governor's statement. So, in the immortal words of Zach de la Rocha, "What is IT?" What is IT? I'm using AI to help with conversations to not cure, but coach diabetic patients. Does this law effect me and my clients? If so, how?

> Define “AI therapy”

They did, in the proposed law.

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

#60

Post by kylecazar »

"One news report found an AI-powered therapist chatbot recommended “a small hit of meth to get through this week” to a fictional former addict."

Not at all surprising. I don't understand why seemingly bright people think this is a good idea, despite knowing the mechanism behind language models.

Hopefully more states follow, because it shouldn't be formally legal in provider settings. Informally, people will continue to use these models for whatever they want -- some will die, but it'll be harder to measure an overall impact. Language models are not ready for this use-case.

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