What if it works a third as well as a therapists but is 20 times cheaper? What word should we use for that?
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Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
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Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went to the doctor and they used some kind of automatic transcription system. Doesn’t seem to be an issue as long as my personal data isn’t shared elsewhere, which I confirmed. Whisper is good enough these days that it can be run on-device with reasonable accuracy so I don’t see an issue.
Last I checked, the popular medical transcription services did send your data to the cloud and run models there.
Yes, but with extra contracts and rules in place.
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs would be just as terrible at that usecase as any other kind of therapy. They don't have logic, and can't determine a logical thought from an illogical one. They tend to be overly agreeable, so they might just reinforce existing negative thoughts. It would still need a therapist to set you on the right track for independent work, and has huge disadvantages compared to the current state-of-the-art, a paper workshe…
They don't "have" logic just like they don't "have" charisma? I'm not sure what you mean. LLMs can simulate having both. ChatGPT can tell me that my assertion is a non sequitur - my conclusion doesn't logically follow from the premise.
Psychopaths can simulate empathy, but lack it.
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#74Here is what Illinois says: https://idfpr.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idfpr/news... I get the impression that it is now illegal in Illinois to claim that an AI chatbot can take the place of a licensed therapist or counselor. That doesn't mean people can't do what they want with AI. It only means that counseling services can't offer AI as a cheaper replacement for a real person. Am I wrong? This sounds good to…
What if at some point an AI is developed that’s a better therapist AND it’s cheaper?
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#75What if it works a third as well as a therapists but is 20 times cheaper? What word should we use for that?
This is the key question IMO, and one good answer is in this recent video about a case of ChatGPT helping someone poison themselves [1].
A trained therapist will probably not tell a patient to take “a small hit of meth to get through this week”. A doctor may be unhelpful or wrong, but they will not instruct you to replace salt with NaBr and poison yourself. "third as well as as therapist" might be true on average, but the suitability of this thing cannot be reduced to averages. Trained humans don't make insane mistakes like that and they know when they are out of their depth and need to consult someone else.
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#76Here is what Illinois says: https://idfpr.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idfpr/news... I get the impression that it is now illegal in Illinois to claim that an AI chatbot can take the place of a licensed therapist or counselor. That doesn't mean people can't do what they want with AI. It only means that counseling services can't offer AI as a cheaper replacement for a real person. Am I wrong? This sounds good to…
While I agree it’s very reasonable to ban marketing of AI as a replacement for a human therapist, I feel like there could still be space for innovation in terms of AI acting as an always-available supplement to the human therapist. If the therapist is reviewing the chats and configuring the system prompt, perhaps it could be beneficial.
It might also be a terrible idea, but we won’t find out if we make it illegal to try new things in a safe/supervised way. Not to say that what I just described would be illegal under this law; I’m not sure whether it would be. I’d expect it will discourage any Illinois-licensed therapists from trying out this kind of idea though.
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is banning claiming your AI is a licensed therapist in the State of Illinois. If you have a court order to attend therapy for drug abuse related reasons you can’t just use ChatGPT according to this law.
It's also banning licensed therapists from using AI. FTA: > Licensed therapists in Illinois are now forbidden from using AI to make treatment decisions or communicate with clients, though they can still use AI for administrative tasks Your doctor can diagnose your cancer with AI, but your therapist can't diagnose your ADHD with AI. Stupid law is stupid.
Not that reliably diagnosing cancer is easy, but reliably diagnosing a mental issue is much harder. That's not a stupid place to put a hard restriction.
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#78[deleted]
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#79Good. It's difficult to imagine a worse use case for LLMs.
You're ignorant. Why wait until a person is so broken they need clinical therapy? Sometimes just a an ear or an oppertunity to write is sufficient. LLMs for therapy is as vaping is to quitting nicotine--extremely helpful to 80+% of people. Confession in the church setting I'd consider similar to talking to LLM. Are you anti-that too? We're talking about people that just need a tool to help them process what is going on in their life at some basic level, not more than just to acknowledge their experience.
And frankly, it's not even clear to me that a human therapist is any better. Yeah, maybe the guard-rails are in place but I'm not convinced that if those are crossed it'd result in some sociately consequences. Let people explorer their mind and experience--at the end of the day, I suspect they'd be healthier for it.
Re: Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy
#80"One news report found an AI-powered therapist chatbot recommended “a small hit of meth to get through this week” to a fictional former addict." Not at all surprising. I don't understand why seemingly bright people think this is a good idea, despite knowing the mechanism behind language models. Hopefully more states follow, because it shouldn't be formally legal in provider settings. Informally, people will continue…
This is why we should never use LLMs to diagnose or prescribe. One small hit of meth definitely won’t last all week.