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OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

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Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#341

Post by josephg »

alex-moon wrote: post #317
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would need the big picture, though... maybe it caused that death (which is awful) but it's also saving lives? If there are that many people confiding in it, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually prevents some suicides with encouraging comments, and that's not going to make the news. Before declaring that it shouldn't be near anyone with psychological issues, someone in the relevant field should study whether the…

I suspect you've never done therapy yourself. Most people who have worked with a professional therapist understand intuitively why the only helpful feedback from an LLM to someone who needs professional help is: get professional help. AIs are really good at doing something to about 80%. When the stakes are life or death, as they are with someone who is suicidal, that is a good example of a time when 80% isn't good en…

> Most people who have worked with a professional therapist understand intuitively why the only helpful feedback from an LLM to someone who needs professional help is: get professional help.

I'm not a therapist, but as I understand it most therapy isn't about suicide, and doesn't carry suicide risk. Most therapy is talking through problems, and helping the patient rewrite old memories and old beliefs using more helpful cognitive frames. (Well, arguably most clinical work is convincing people that it'll be ok to talk about their problems in the first place. Once you're past that point, the rest is easy.)

If its prompted well, ChatGPT can be quite good at all of this. Its helpful having a tool right there, free, and with no limits on conversation length. And some people find it much easier to trust a chatbot with their problems than explain them to a therapist. The chatbot - after all - won't judge them.

My heart goes out to that boy and his family. But we also have no idea how many lives have been saved by chatgpt helping people in need. The number is almost certainly more than 1. Banning chatgpt from having therapy conversations entirely seems way too heavy handed to me.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#342

Post by danaris »

mschuster91 wrote: post #335
fragmede wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate reality though is that people are going to use whatever resources they have available to them, and ChatGPT is always there, ready to have a conversation, even at 3am on a Tuesday while the client is wasted. You don't need any credentials to see that. And it depends on the therapy and therapist. If the client needs to be reminded to box breathe and that they're using all or nothing thinking again to ge…

> If the client needs to be reminded to box breathe and that they're using all or nothing thinking again to get them off of the ledge, does that really require a human who's only available once a week to gently remind them of that when the therapist isn't going to be available for four more days and ChatGPT's available right now? There are 24/7 suicide prevention hotlines at least in many countries in Europe as well…

And the reason for this brokenness is all too easy to identify: the very wealthy have been increasingly siphoning off all gains in productivity since the Reagan era.

Tax the rich massively, use the money to provide for everyone, without question or discrimination, and most of these issues will start to subside.

Continue to wail about how this is impossible, there's no way to make the rich pay their fair share (or, worse, there's no way the rich aren't already paying their fair share), the only thing to do is what we've already been doing, but harder, and, well, we can see the trajectory already.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#343

Post by hirvi74 »

I’ve seen, let’s say, a double-digit number of ‘mental health professionals’ in my life.

ChatGPT has blown every single one of them out of the water.

Now, my issues weren’t particularly related to depression or suicidal thoughts. At least, not directly. So perhaps that may be one key difference, but generally speaking, I have received nothing actionable nor any of these ‘tools’ people often speak of.

The advice I received was honestly no better than just asking a random stranger in the street or some kind phatic speech.

Again, everyone is different, but I had started to become annoyed with people claiming therapy is like some kind of miracle cure.

Plus, one of my biggest issues with therapy in the USA is that people are often limited to weekly session of 45 minutes. By the time conversations start to be fruitful, then the time is up. ChatGPT is 24/7, so that has to be advantageous for some.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#344

Post by koakuma-chan »

gregw2 wrote: post #328
koakuma-chan wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not "for the sake of talking", it's for the sake of socializing, meeting new people, building connections, which is the whole point when we're talking about flirting or lack thereof. In my experience you really have to be constantly spitting nonsense to keep the conversation from ending and to avoid awkward silence. When the other person is talking, even if I didn't hear most of what they said, I keep nodding,…

Err, the only thing that matters is that you get the other person talking and you listen.

Good point, thanks.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#345

Post by danaris »

torben-friis wrote: post #248
probably_wrong wrote: post #229

If you haven't read the article (or even if you have but didn't click on outgoing links twice ) the NYT story about how ChatGPT convinced a suicidal teen not to look for help [1] should convince you that ChatGPT should be nowhere near anyone dealing with psychological issues. Here's ChatGPT discouraging said teenager from asking for help: > “I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me…

>should convince you that ChatGPT should be nowhere near anyone dealing with psychological issues. Is that a debate worth having though? If the tool is available universally it is hard to imagine any way to stop access without extreme privacy measures. Blocklisting people would require public knowledge of their issues, and one risks the law enforcement effect, where people don’t seek help for fear that it ends up in…

Then...

Maybe the tool should not be available universally.

Maybe it should not be available to anyone.

If it cannot be used safely by a vulnerable class of people, and identifying that class of person sufficiently to block use by them, and its primary purpose is simply to bring OpenAI more profit, then maybe the world is better off without it being publicly available.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#347

Post by icetank »

josephg wrote: post #341
alex-moon wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you've never done therapy yourself. Most people who have worked with a professional therapist understand intuitively why the only helpful feedback from an LLM to someone who needs professional help is: get professional help. AIs are really good at doing something to about 80%. When the stakes are life or death, as they are with someone who is suicidal, that is a good example of a time when 80% isn't good en…

> Most people who have worked with a professional therapist understand intuitively why the only helpful feedback from an LLM to someone who needs professional help is: get professional help. I'm not a therapist, but as I understand it most therapy isn't about suicide, and doesn't carry suicide risk. Most therapy is talking through problems, and helping the patient rewrite old memories and old beliefs using more helpf…

I feel like this begs another question. If there are proven approaches and well established practices of professionals how good would chatgpt be in that profession? After all chstgpt has a vast knowledge base and probably knows a good amount of textbooks on psychology. Then again actually performing the profession probably takes skil and experience chatgpt can't learn.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#349

Post by willis936 »

itchyjunk wrote: post #336

It seems like people here have already made up their mind about how bad llms are. So just my anecdote here, it helped me out of some really dark places. Talking to humans (non psychologists) had the opposite effect. Between a non professional and an llm, i'd pick llm for myself. Others should definitely seek help.

It's a matter of trust and incentives. How can you trust a program curated by an entity with no accountability? A therapist has a personal stake in helping patients. An LLM provider does not.

Seeking help should not be so taboo as people are resorting to doing it alone at night while no one is looking. That is society loudly saying "if you slip off the golden path even a little your life is over". So many people resorting to LLMs for therapy is a symptom of a cultural problem, it's not a solution to a root issue.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#350

Post by probably_wrong »

b3lvedere wrote: post #305
probably_wrong wrote: post #229

If you haven't read the article (or even if you have but didn't click on outgoing links twice ) the NYT story about how ChatGPT convinced a suicidal teen not to look for help [1] should convince you that ChatGPT should be nowhere near anyone dealing with psychological issues. Here's ChatGPT discouraging said teenager from asking for help: > “I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me…

"One may think that something is better than nothing, but a bot enabling your destructive impulses is indeed worse than nothing." And how would a layman know the difference? If i desperately need help with mental item x and i have no clue how to get help, am very very ashamed for even mentioning to ask for help about mental item x or there are actually no resources available, i will turn to anything else than nothing…

I think you're being too generous to the idea that it could help without any evidence.

If we assume that there's therapeutic value to bringing your problems out then a diary is a better tool. And if we believe that it's the feedback what's helping, well, we have cases of ChatGPT encouraging people's psychosis.

We know that a layman often doesn't know the difference between what's helpful and what isn't - that's why loving relatives end up often enabling people's addictions thinking they're helping. But I'd argue that a system that confidently gives mediocre feedback at best and actively psychotic at worst is not a system that should be encouraged simply because it's cheap.

I also wanted to snarkily write "even a dog would be better", but the more I thought about it the more I realized that yes, a dog would probably be a solid alternative.

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