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More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

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Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#31

Post by thin_carapace »

ai_critic wrote: post #23

Is anyone actually surprised? The baseline empathy and emotional intelligence of people, both online and offline, has absolutely tanked--I think Covid was the epoch, but arguably going a lot farther back since then. People are just shitty .

retail facing acquaintances have confirmed to me that this started long before covid. personally I'm much more of a misanthrope than average, still to me it's more important to focus on systems (like the modern western system of no values no books no community no nutrients no free time no third space no thinking only consumption) as opposed to focusing on symptoms (eg. people behaving animalistically when confronted with a system that does not align with the needs of its occupants). we are all living creatures trying to optimize, therefore outside of edge cases there's functionally no difference between you, I, and 'shitty' people

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#32

Post by komali2 »

tonymet wrote: post #6
smokedetector1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree. This cant do as much as genuine therapy (which requires another person, no way around it). But it is helpful in some ways. It helped me talk through something last week and it genuinely enriched my life in that way.

Does therapy actually work? Not by the numbers. tons enrolled, none cured.

Therapy keeps people alive that wouldn't otherwise be, and people coping that wouldn't otherwise be able to.

I've noticed that the human tolerance for extreme suffering leads sometimes to binary thinking. "Well they're still going to work even though they're made to piss in bottles, they must be fine with it!" Human experience is a wide array of emotions and states, I don't think we should try to separate into "cured/healthy" and "unhealthy/requiring adjustment by a mental health professional." Improving quality of life is also good.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#33

Post by agnosticmantis »

I haven't done it yet due to privacy concerns, but I would totally do it with a private local model that's as intelligent as current frontier models and is not sycophantic and perhaps is finetuned on the psychology literature.

My reasoning is that, if therapy is a well-understood science, then I trust a big finetuned LLM more than a run-of-the-mill human therapist. I will not be able to afford a Harvard trained psychologist.

If therapy is more of an art and needs the human touch and mojo, then again, then again I'm not going to be able to afford Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung.

The few times I've tried human therapists, my impression was that the questions and answers were fairly standardized, which I think LLMs can excel at. Not to mention I'm more at ease talking to silicon- than carbon-based creatures.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#35

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

weakened_malloc wrote: post #27

Is it really any surprise with how expensive psychologists and therapy are?

They’re trained professionals. And we’ve sent demand through the roof by convincing everyone and their dog that they need therapy. Despite it seemingly doing way more harm than good for a lot of people who probably don’t need therapy.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#36

Post by swores »

Barrin92 wrote: post #21

> "Respondents report spending an average of 5.1 hours a day on screens during the week (excluding working and studying hours and excluding weekends), with screen time rising to 6.4 hours in the Philippines and Thailand. Two out of three people believe that this exposure has several negative, even if moderate, effects on their mental health." 5-6 hours excluding work and study is mental. I know "touching grass" isn't…

It partly depends on whether "time spent on screens" is counting time where a person's attention is primarily on the screen, or time when a screen is actively directed at a person.

As a few examples from my life (I'm sure there are plenty of other such scenarios too):

- There are quite a few hours in a typical week where my phone screen is showing a video, but just because I can't have it playing in the background (eg YouTube without premium, although actually I've just installed a third party app to get around that for YT). I'm actually just listening with a wireless earpiece or two while doing something else.

- Time spent with a friend where we're sort of watching TV, but more than half the time our attention is on our conversation not on the screen.

- Time spent multitasking, whether that's doing a hobby while also watching TV, or texting people while also eating, or whatever.

Those types of things can make the difference between a certain amount of screen time being a much smaller or much bigger part of a person's day.

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#37

Post by tonymet »

komali2 wrote: post #32
tonymet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does therapy actually work? Not by the numbers. tons enrolled, none cured.

Therapy keeps people alive that wouldn't otherwise be, and people coping that wouldn't otherwise be able to. I've noticed that the human tolerance for extreme suffering leads sometimes to binary thinking. "Well they're still going to work even though they're made to piss in bottles, they must be fine with it!" Human experience is a wide array of emotions and states, I don't think we should try to separate into "cured…

The suicidality blackmail

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#38

Post by tonymet »

RickS wrote: post #12
tonymet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does therapy actually work? Not by the numbers. tons enrolled, none cured.

Worked great for me. Big recommend. "Cured" is mostly an unspecifiable state, and while certainly there's lots still wrong with me, I am healed far beyond my expectations at the outset, so increment your count by one.

Cured would mean you are healed . No more therapeutics , no more abnormalities

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#39

Post by tonymet »

thewebguyd wrote: post #9
tonymet wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does therapy actually work? Not by the numbers. tons enrolled, none cured.

With most therapy the goal isn't to cure, but to manage and help cope in a healthy way. There are also plenty of mental illnesses or disorders that have no cure, and a few that are in the DSM because they cause problems with how our society is structured, not necessarily because its a true disorder (its only disorder because it causes issues functioning within societal systems).

They are made up. None of them are empirically or objectively defined

Re: More than 6 out of 10 people turn to AI for psychological support

#40

Post by idiotsecant »

agnosticmantis wrote: post #33

I haven't done it yet due to privacy concerns, but I would totally do it with a private local model that's as intelligent as current frontier models and is not sycophantic and perhaps is finetuned on the psychology literature. My reasoning is that, if therapy is a well-understood science, then I trust a big finetuned LLM more than a run-of-the-mill human therapist. I will not be able to afford a Harvard trained psych…

The problem is that all the frontier models tend to be more sycophantic when confronted with emotional support issues.
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