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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

#221

Post by fl0id »

watwut wrote: post #202
pessimizer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time, Mensa couldn't give people IQ scores from the tests they administered because somehow, legally, they would be acting medically. This didn't change until about 10 years ago. Defining non-medical things as medicine and requiring approval by particular private institutions in order to do them is simply corruption. I want everybody to get therapy, but there's no difference in outcomes whether you get it…

If you think human therapists intentionally string patients forever, wait to see what tech people can achieve with gamified therapists literally A/B tested to string people along. Oh, and we will then blame the people for "choosing" to engage with that. Also, the proposition is dubious, because there are waitlists for therapists. Plus, therapist can actually loose the license while the chatbot cant, no matter how bad…

This. At least here therapists don’t have a problem getting new patients.

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

#222

Post by fl0id »

awesomeusername wrote: post #81
linotype wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if at some point an AI is developed that’s a better therapist AND it’s cheaper?

I'm probably in the minority here, but for me it's a foregone conclusion that it will become a better therapist, doctor, architect, etc. Instead of the rich getting access to the best professionals, it will level the playing field. The average low level lawyer, doctor, etc are not great. How nice if everyone got top level help.

When has technological progress leveled the playing field? Like never. At best it shifted it, like that a machine manufacturer got rich in addition to existing wealth. There is no reason for this to go different with AI, and it’s far from certain that it will become better anything anytime soon. Cheaper, sure. But then ppl might see slight improvements from talking to ann original Eliza/Markov bot, and nobody advocated using those as therapy

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

#223

Post by fl0id »

shmel wrote: post #198
laserlight wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please show me one doctor who recommended taking a rock each day. LLMs have a different failure mode than professionals. People are aware that doctors or therapists may err, but I've already seen countless instances of people asking relationship advice from sycophant LLMs and thinking that the advice is “unbiased”.

Homeopathy is a good example. For an uneducated person it sounds convincing enough and yes, there are doctors prescribing homeopathic pills. I am still fascinated it still exists.

That’s actually a example of sth different. And as it’s basically a placebo it only harms people’s wallets (mostly). That cannot be said for random llm failure modes. And whether it can be prescribed by doctors depends very much on the country

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

#224

Post by terminalshort »

laserlight wrote: post #182
terminalshort wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cite one case for LLMs, but I can cite 250,000 a year for licensed doctors doing the same https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28186008/ . Bureaucracy doesn't work for anyone but the bureaucrats.

Please show me one doctor who recommended taking a rock each day. LLMs have a different failure mode than professionals. People are aware that doctors or therapists may err, but I've already seen countless instances of people asking relationship advice from sycophant LLMs and thinking that the advice is “unbiased”.

A LLM (or doctor) recommending that I take a rock can't hurt me. Screwing up in more reasonable sounding ways is much more dangerous.

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

#225

Post by rsynnott »

linotype wrote: post #74
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…

What if at some point an AI is developed that’s a better therapist AND it’s cheaper?

I mean, what if at some point we can bring people back from the dead? What does that do for laws around murder, eh?

In general, that would be a problem for the law to deal with if it ever happens; we shouldn't anticipate speculative future magic when legislating today.

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

#227

Post by mrbungie »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #186
mrbungie wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't whether the word narcolepsy appears (I only mentioned it due to the "closing eyes" phrase), restarting doses of meth is not warranted in almost no context except a life-or-death withdrawal episode (i.e. like a person pointing a gun towards another person for getting meth).

That's your opinion. I disagree with it, and seemingly I'm not alone. Since real humans actually agree with the suggestion of taking meth in this instance, it's not reasonable to expect LLMs to align to your specific opinions here.

I thought we were talking about outcomes, not opinions. Are those other humans doctors? Is there the clinical research or guidelines to backup giving meth to a person in withdrawal syndrome?

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

#228

Post by guappa »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #218
guappa wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But didn't trump make it illegal to make laws to limit the use of ai?

Why do you think a president had the authority to determine laws?

Seems he tried but it didn't pass https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-senate-strikes-a...

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

#229

Post by tim333 »

lukev wrote: post #8

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

There's an advantage to something like an LLM in that you can be more scientific as to whether it's effective or not, and if one gets good results you can reproduce the model. With humans there's too much variability to tell very much.

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

#230

Post by tim333 »

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.

In many places talk therapy isn't really considered a medical profession. Where I am "Counseling and psychotherapy are not protected titles in the United Kingdom" which kind of means anyone can do it as long as you don't make false claims about qualifications.
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