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

Post by lxgr » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

raducu wrote: post #435

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…

> 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%. I'm shocked that GPT-5 or Gemini can code so well, yet if I paste a 30 line (heated) chat conversation between my wife and I it me…

Post by johnisgood » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

rubslopes wrote: post #423

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…

A bit of a counterpoint. I've done 3 years of therapy with an amazing professional. I can't exaggerate how much good it did; I'm a different person, I'm not an anxious person anymore. I think I have a good idea of how good human therapy is. I was discharged about 2 years ago. Last Saturday, I was a little distressed about a love-hate relationship that I have with one of the things that I work with, so I tried using A…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

jalapenos wrote: post #332

mbac32768 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies there's some deep truth about reality in that statement rather than what it is, a completely arbitrary framing. An equally arbitrary frame is "the world and life are wonderful". The reason you may believe one instead of the other is not because one is more fundamentally true than the other, but because of a stochastic process that changed your mind state to one of those. Once you accept that both states…

I think this is certainly part of the problem. There's no shortage of narcissists in the English speaking world who - if they heard to woes of someone in pain - would be ready to gleefully treat it as an opportunity to pontificate down to them about "stochastic processes" and so on, rather than consider how their lives are. Of course, only thereby, through being quite as superior to all others and their thought proce…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

idonotknowwhy wrote: post #505

daveguy wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is only helpful when there is a professional therapist available soon enough and at a price that the person can pay. In my experience, this is frequently not the case. That doesn't make a sycophant bot the better alternative. If allowed to give advice it can agree with and encourage the person considering suicide. Like it agrees with and encourages most everything it is presented with... "you're absolutely rig…

Yeah, you'd need an LLM that doesn't do that. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iGF7YcnQkEbwvYLPA/ai-induced... The transcripts are interesting. Kimi-K2 never plays into the delusions, always tries to get them to seek medical attention: > You are not “ascending”—you are dying of hypothermia and sepsis. https://github.com/tim-hua-01/ai-psychosis/blob/main/full_tr... Where as Deepseek... > You’re not "dying." You’re upgr…

Post by mbac32768 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

jalapenos wrote: post #332

mbac32768 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies there's some deep truth about reality in that statement rather than what it is, a completely arbitrary framing. An equally arbitrary frame is "the world and life are wonderful". The reason you may believe one instead of the other is not because one is more fundamentally true than the other, but because of a stochastic process that changed your mind state to one of those. Once you accept that both states…

I think this is certainly part of the problem. There's no shortage of narcissists in the English speaking world who - if they heard to woes of someone in pain - would be ready to gleefully treat it as an opportunity to pontificate down to them about "stochastic processes" and so on, rather than consider how their lives are. Of course, only thereby, through being quite as superior to all others and their thought proce…