The dependence on it could be an issue for human to human interaction as the machine always says the better thing
Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
41–50 of 80 posts
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not at all ashamed to say that I use ChatGPT as a therapist and it is helping me tremendously. I suffer from a severe personality disorder and the thoughts and feelings I experience are huge and violent and overwhelming and very very dark. I've tried human therapists, I've tried reaching out to humans for support, but there's kind of a problem... You're supposed to learn to regulate as a toddler when your emotio…
I'm glad it's helping you, and there's no shame in it, but to anyone else, please, please seek help from a qualified mental health professional. Support is available, in many cases for free and with urgent response if necessary. LLMs are an echo chamber. They reflect back what we put into them, both in training, and in usage. This can certainly be useful for working through problems, but they can also amplify and rei…
> Support is available, in many cases for free and with urgent response if necessary.
It's actually not in most places. Maybe in SF or Seattle?
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#43people getting addicted to a chatbot is so weird to me…
just talk to another human, i mean…
the lengths some people will go to in order to diminish other people is bizarre. just talk to another person.
if you’re paranoid people are judging you or something, consider if you judge others harshly and maybe this makes you needlessly paranoid. we’re all just trying moving about through the world trying our best to figure shit out the best we can. that includes everyone here.
just talk to another person, give it longer than an awkward first impression tho. just talk to another person—we’re not scary.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#44I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
I see a real world therapist but there are genuinely topics ChatGPT is simply better at.
I also feel like real therapists almost have too much state. They know too much about you to just let you talk. They like to try to tie all your problems back to other issues, and it's like no, my inability to give up childhood toys is not rooted in my crippling fear of nothingness, and you're derailing my line of thought with the suggestion.
I have frankly had some very productive conversations with ChatGPT about things I would be embarrassed to tell another human being. The lack of any real judgement is useful.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#45[deleted]
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#46Imagine being schizophrenic (or anything like that) and hearing from Snowden that yes, "they really are always listening", and now you've got chat bots to give instant confirmation of all the other things you think of due to your mental disorder.
It's going to be mental.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad it's helping you, and there's no shame in it, but to anyone else, please, please seek help from a qualified mental health professional. Support is available, in many cases for free and with urgent response if necessary. LLMs are an echo chamber. They reflect back what we put into them, both in training, and in usage. This can certainly be useful for working through problems, but they can also amplify and rei…
> Support is available, in many cases for free and with urgent response if necessary. It's actually not in most places. Maybe in SF or Seattle?
It actually is in many places. Most European countries have relatively available support, significant portions of North and South America do, Oceania, etc. I don't know as much about Africa and Asia, but I'd expect most countries with well developed healthcare systems to include some amount of mental health care in that.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#48I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
ChatGPT is not the only type of AI Chatbot.
The role-playing chatbots like character.ai are more of a problem because people are forming emotional relationships with these "characters".
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#49I really didn’t think I’d be saying this… but I genuinely feel ChatGPT has positively impacted my mental health. I often use it as a therapist. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it actually works pretty well. It has an exceptionally high EQ and often uses language far better than I ever could to help uncover the thoughts and feelings I’m processing. Sometimes, just finding the right words to express myself relieves a…
I have tried using it as a therapist for issues that are not sensitive and I think it's great. I won't use it for sensitive issues due to privacy concerns. I also have tried to use it as a personal trainer and coach and works great - so far.
Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization
#50A good heuristic test of correlation vs causation in headlines: flip the dependent and independent variable and see which explanation sounds more reasonable. Heavy llm chat usage leads to loneliness | or | Loneliness leads to heavy chat usage. To my eye the second seems far more likely than the first.
Correlation vs. causation is addressed in the article: Note that these studies aren’t suggesting that heavy ChatGPT usage directly causes loneliness. Rather, it suggests that lonely people are more likely to seek emotional bonds with bots — just as an earlier generation of research suggested that lonelier people spend more time on social media. My heuristic for HN is that when commenters focus on the headline, they a…
Reasonable perspective. I went back through the article and the content is more balanced than I initially would have guessed from the initial visualizations.
However, the much more assertive initial visualizations and the opening caption— “A chart illustrates that the longer people spend with ChatGPT, the likelier they are to report feelings of loneliness and other mental health risks” — convinced me not to continue reading.