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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

#61

Post by tejohnso »

delecti wrote: post #26
perlgeek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LLMs would be just as terrible at that usecase as any other kind of therapy. They don't have logic, and can't determine a logical thought from an illogical one. They tend to be overly agreeable, so they might just reinforce existing negative thoughts. It would still need a therapist to set you on the right track for independent work, and has huge disadvantages compared to the current state-of-the-art, a paper workshe…

They don't "have" logic just like they don't "have" charisma? I'm not sure what you mean. LLMs can simulate having both. ChatGPT can tell me that my assertion is a non sequitur - my conclusion doesn't logically follow from the premise.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

romanows wrote: post #27
PeterCorless wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It is more provider-oriented proscription ("You can't say your chatbot is a therapist.") It is not a limitation on usage. You can still, for now, slavishly fall in love with your AI and treat it as your best friend and therapist. There is a specific section that relates to how a licensed professional can use AI: Section 15. Permitted use of artificial intelligence. (a) As used in this Section, "permitted use…

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…

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by mrbungie »

lukev wrote: post #54
erikig wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI ≠ LLMs

What other form of "AI" would be remotely capable of even emulating therapy, at this juncture?

I promise you that by next year AI will be there, just believe me bro. /s.

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

#64

Post by mrbungie »

wisty wrote: post #46
lukev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Yet the evidence is that almost everything can and is treated with CBT.

Nope, that's not right. BPD can't be treated with CBT (comorbidities may be, with caveats if BPD is the root cause), you probably will also need at least DBT.

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

#65

Post by Ukv »

inetknght wrote: post #50
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?

> What if it works a third as well as a therapists but is 20 times cheaper? When there's studies that show it, perhaps we might have that conversation. Until then: I'd call it "wrong". Moreover, there's a lot more that needs to be asked before you can ask for a one-word summary disregarding all nuance. - can the patient use the AI therapist on their own devices and without any business looking at the data and without…

Relevant RCT results I saw a while back seemed promising: https://ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/AIoa2400802

> can the patient use the AI therapist on their own devices and without any business looking at the data and without network connection? Keep in mind that many patients won't have access to the internet.

Agree that data privacy would be one of my concerns.

In terms of accessibility, while availability to those without network connections (or a powerful computer) should be an ideal goal, I don't think it should be a blocker on such tools existing when for many the barriers to human therapy are considerably higher.

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

#66

Post by janalsncm »

PeterCorless wrote: post #20
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…

Correct. It is more provider-oriented proscription ("You can't say your chatbot is a therapist.") It is not a limitation on usage. You can still, for now, slavishly fall in love with your AI and treat it as your best friend and therapist. There is a specific section that relates to how a licensed professional can use AI: Section 15. Permitted use of artificial intelligence. (a) As used in this Section, "permitted use…

I went to the doctor and they used some kind of automatic transcription system. Doesn’t seem to be an issue as long as my personal data isn’t shared elsewhere, which I confirmed.

Whisper is good enough these days that it can be run on-device with reasonable accuracy so I don’t see an issue.

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

#67

Post by bluefirebrand »

lupire wrote: post #37
germinalphrase wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many therapy services have the ability to diagnose as therapy proceeds though

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

#68

Post by xboxnolifes »

dingnuts wrote: post #57
jacobsenscott wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Software engineers are so accustomed to the idea that skirting your professional responsibility ends with a slap on the wrist and not removing your ability to practice your profession entirely.

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

#69

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

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?

Something like this can only really be worth approaching if there was an analog to losing your license for it. If a therapist screws up badly enough once, I'm assuming they can lose their license for good. If people want to replace them with AI, then screwing up badly enough should similarly lose that AI the ability to practice for good. I can already imagine companies behind these things saying "no, we've learned, we won't do it again, please give us our license back" just like a human would.

But I can't imagine companies going for that. Everyone seems to want to scale the profits but not accept the consequences of the scaled risks, and increased risks is basically what working a third as well amounts to.

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

#70

Post by WorkerBee28474 »

janalsncm wrote: post #66
PeterCorless wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. It is more provider-oriented proscription ("You can't say your chatbot is a therapist.") It is not a limitation on usage. You can still, for now, slavishly fall in love with your AI and treat it as your best friend and therapist. There is a specific section that relates to how a licensed professional can use AI: Section 15. Permitted use of artificial intelligence. (a) As used in this Section, "permitted use…

I went to the doctor and they used some kind of automatic transcription system. Doesn’t seem to be an issue as long as my personal data isn’t shared elsewhere, which I confirmed. Whisper is good enough these days that it can be run on-device with reasonable accuracy so I don’t see an issue.

Last I checked, the popular medical transcription services did send your data to the cloud and run models there.
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