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I'm curious how the Motte sees using AI for therapy / life advice? Online I'm seeing a ton of people recommend Claude especially, but others are skeptical.
On the one hand I could see it being useful because of the fact that you have nigh-unfettered access to it, and can really dig into deep problems. Also, it's trained on all the therapy texts of course.
The other, more culture war issue, is that due to the way RLHF works, they will likely be pushing one ideological lens over another. Especially about deep topics like morality, relationships, casual sex, etc.
Overall I think it's a fascinating area of development, and I'm still optimistic that LLMs could help people much more than the average therapist. Mainly because I'm pretty bearish on the help people get from the average therapist.
Anyway, what do people think about therapy becoming AI?
Therapy is inherently opinionated. I can't see an LLM offering any deep insights because deep insights are sharp and cutting. LLMs are soft.
But, They are good for Reddit tier sanity checks. "My parents used to beat me within an inch of my life. Is that abuse?"; Yeah, an LLM will help with that. But so will Reddit. LLMs can be especially useful here if it is too embarrassing to post even as an Anon.
Overall, It serves as a great 'intake specialist' and friend. Not so much therapist. Great resouce for intial direction and to riff off. Emotional or otherwise.
I wouldnt trust it past that point.
Does regular therapy actually do more than that? Most of the value (unless you’re literally diagnosed with a real mental disorder) is in hearing yourself talk about the problem. It’s probably no better or worse than talking to a friend or clergy or a parent. Even journaling generally helps to get things off your chest and often just putting down on paper the stuff that happened or that’s in your head can give you insight.
Therapy is probably worse than talking to a parent/pastor/friend, because therapists are paid strangers who’ve been trained to see every problem primarily in terms of feelings.
Therapists also are financially incentivized not to "fix" you. This is a danger in a lot of professions, but due to the nature of mental health, it's not nearly as obvious when there's malpractice – at least you can tell when a doctor has failed to set your leg. And it's also easier for someone to fail to do what's best for the patient in subtle ways; a surgeon might make a mistake or cut a corner out of tiredness, but it's even easier to deceive yourself about your own motives and undermine your patient for any number of reasons, as a therapist.
I'm not saying all therapists are evil, greedy, or even useless. But the incentives flow in directions that really should make you think twice and very carefully before you reach for your wallet.
I don’t buy into therapy. But if I was going to do therapy, I would want clear actionable goals for what I want to achieve and when it is achieved.
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