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Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

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Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#51

Post by kianN »

lukev wrote: post #37
kianN wrote: post #9

A 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.

Many (if not most) human dynamics do not have a single direction of causality. The whole premise of cognitive behavioral therapy is that human psychology can be described as nested feedback loops between behavior, emotion, and cognition.

The lack of a single direction is a really good point. In my mind I was thinking more from the perspective of tempering evocative headlines. But my rule also lacks quite a bit of nuance

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#52

Post by knallfrosch »

brookst wrote: post #16

Or they might not. Or they might be a net mental health benefit. Or they may benefit some users and harm others. Or it may be impossible to disentangle their effect from all of the other changes going on. Probably one of those things, unless it’s something else.

Seems like you reacted only to the title. Guidelines stop me from asking you whether you read the article.

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#53

Post by balamatom »

danpalmer wrote: post #47
joquarky wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Some amount of mental health care" and "widely available mental support for free and with urgent response" are vastly different goalposts.

[CW: long-ass heavy-duty story happening closer to you than you think.]

I don't know what your mental health history is, but one of my friends had to use a VPN, then lie about their location to a volunteer operator, in order to access a suicide prevention chatline on the other side of the globe, just to have someone help them keep it together while their ex-SO was actively driving them to suicide - or worse.

They also had to move to the middle of nowhere so that the ex, or the friends of the ex, wouldn't be able to randomly show up at their door. The (widely lauded) only domestic abuse hotline in the country did exactly half of nothing whatsoever, shout out Animus foundation, hashtag slay queen.

I wish I could've somehow helped to resolve that whole situation, I was probably the only one of their acquaintances who even had any idea what they were going through; all the same, at the time I was stuck in my own cycles of psychological warfare. There's only so much support you can provide without getting dragged down with them, you know?

Perhaps a trained professional in a therapeutic environment can help somewhat more, but would they be able to help sufficiently to get back on their feet someone who has been failed by the entire societal edifice starting with primary caretakers? Not necessarily. I mean have you even seen some of the sorts of people that become therapists? They might as well be vibe coders!

This is in EU, though admittedly not the "former colonial power" part of the EU. So you end up presuming quite a lot, just because where you live the state has taken some more organized measures to prevent people from freaking out (at realizing what's going on around them, hehehe.)

xoz123 gets it. Sometimes there is no non-adversarial person available. Sometimes it's absolutely overwhelming to be the only adult, small and powerless in a room of powerful overgrown toddlers. Sometimes you're the only sane and conscientious person, forced to conform to a culture of self-important violent psychopaths. Sometimes it's all that, plus the state wants to punish you for the fact that you suffer. Most of the time, you're on your own, and that alone serves as sufficient ground for being subjected to censure.

And sometimes it's worse. I seriously worry about how much worse it can be made with the help of some AI that is trained to be more familiar with these type of phenomena than any civilized person cares to be, and has none of the basic restraints.

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#54

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

labrador wrote: post #11

I'm a senior citizen and I use it sometimes to explain what is happening to me as I age. For example, I noticed myself doing "excessive rumination" about the long gone past, which I attributed to the near-dystopian nightmare I am living through in the U.S. presently. I asked ChatGPT about it and it said, no, excessive rumination is a problem for many people as they age due to various factors. Then it suggested some r…

FWIW, I'm in my 30s and already excessively ruminating on the long gone past! It started after losing loved ones.

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#55

Post by lynx97 »

danpalmer wrote: post #38
xoz123 wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

While I am not ready to argue for LLMs in therapy, I know that mental health professionals also feel very much like an echo chamber. At least my experience is that if you confront them with harsh enough reality, they basically fail to provide anything useful. "I feel your pain" isn't really useful, at least not if you are already aware of your situation...

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#56

Post by levanten »

lynx97 wrote: post #55
danpalmer wrote: post #38

Earlier 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…

While I am not ready to argue for LLMs in therapy, I know that mental health professionals also feel very much like an echo chamber. At least my experience is that if you confront them with harsh enough reality, they basically fail to provide anything useful. "I feel your pain" isn't really useful, at least not if you are already aware of your situation...

> At least my experience is that if you confront them with harsh enough reality, they basically fail to provide anything useful.

When I started therapy, I felt the same way. But now I realize that there can be no easy solutions offered in therapy; the therapist cannot just give you an argument or trick that will resolve all your troubles. They are there to guide you through figuring it out yourself and help build the necessary habits to sustain the new state. That is why rapport between a therapist and their patient is crucial to success, thus why you are usually recommended to try several alternatives.

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#57

Post by lynx97 »

levanten wrote: post #56
lynx97 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am not ready to argue for LLMs in therapy, I know that mental health professionals also feel very much like an echo chamber. At least my experience is that if you confront them with harsh enough reality, they basically fail to provide anything useful. "I feel your pain" isn't really useful, at least not if you are already aware of your situation...

> At least my experience is that if you confront them with harsh enough reality, they basically fail to provide anything useful. When I started therapy, I felt the same way. But now I realize that there can be no easy solutions offered in therapy; the therapist cannot just give you an argument or trick that will resolve all your troubles. They are there to guide you through figuring it out yourself and help build the…

I feel like you are describing life. And your paragraph could be rephrased by striking every occurance of "therapist" and it would still be valid. Hence, therapists are pretty much useless, they dont provide anything a friend or peer can not provide. After all, they dont have any magic tricks to offer. Navigating the complexities of life, and creating useful habits to make it, is what we all do on a daily basis, regardless if we see a therapist or not...

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#58

Post by imtringued »

balamatom wrote: post #23
rottc0dd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm... maybe that is why, earliest chatbot carried a "therapist" tag. https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/eliza.html

The story goes that people would request to have sessions with it, even if they knew it's just parroting some phrases. They just needed to be heard out! I feel really sad about how people need to resort to therapy for the kind of interaction that would be provided by a healthy social norm of honest and open communication. Maybe I should talk to my therapist about this feeling. But somehow I doubt that would actually…

The problem is that there are a lot of people who are destroying the ability to communicate in the name of "morality", when in reality they are just political opportunists, who are indirectly harming themselves, including their supposed political cause, in the process.

The amount of wilful bridge burning is crazy.

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#59

Post by strogonoff »

drooby wrote: post #2

I 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…

Communication with humans makes us feel better. In absence of actual humans, an LLM trained on human works is better than nothing. However, it is worth remembering, in context of mental health, that it is just that: an aggregate of creative output from various humans, with their own mental warts and all, plus the added complication of ML engineers making it conform to your expectations.

Re: Heavy chatbot usage is correlated with loneliness and reduced socialization

#60

Post by anal_reactor »

drooby wrote: post #2

I 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 exactly the opposite experience. I was having exceptionally bad time, I tried talking to ChatGPT, and while the first impression was very good, I quickly realized it... lacks personality? I'm not sure how to phrase it, but the language it used made me feel like I was on a work meeting.

I think this might be boiling down to cultural differences though. I noticed that even though I work in an international company, people from similar cultures tend to cluster together. I guess ChatGPT was trained on texts from a culture that isn't mine, and now it fails to adapt.

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