I feel like the bleakness in this isn’t so much that AI will role play a therapist, more that mental health care is so inaccessible that people are turning to AI as a substitute. A cyberpunk dystopian opium of the masses.
No human cares. Tell your secrets to robot. Robot will make you feel better by providing more accurate advertising through our 2500 affiliate companies. We fund this service by selling your personal data profile to your insurance providers, employers, helicopter parents, dating prospects, creeps and every company ever.
It's even worse.
"Trust me, tell me your secrets. Now I can use what I know to embed the message my billionaire owner wants in your brain. Also white genocide is a real thing."
Obviously no supports from a person who actually did some training AND can actually be effective at helping people deal with mental health is terrible. I'm glad Emma has an actual psychologist but obviously she seems like she isn't getting enough supports and so has turned to ChatGPT presumably because at $20 a month (or free, which gets turned into training data)
ChatGPT is no substitute. It is at most a funhouse mirror of exactly what you put in it along with whatever Sam Altman has figured out causes maximal engagement. It is the smooth pool of Narcissus. The passive reflection of your own emotion and experiences can be done without the sycophantic AI telling you you're a genius and whatever else obsequious mewling it's doing.
chatgpt collects training data even if you pay, I’m pretty sure
And the engagement loop is shockingly transparent but it captures people fairly well. It’s basically one of 3-5 responses (compliment you and prompt directly being the most common) with dozens of permutations of each so it feels a bit less “stiff”
I feel for this person but I also question what they want from treatment. They already have a psychologist. Obviously this is just an image so I don’t know anything more; maybe they can only see them monthly or something.
But in my work as a therapist I find there are a lot of people who want to increase services when what they really want is more social connection. I turn this down because it’s not ethical for me to take their money or bill their insurance for this and even if that wasn’t the case it ultimately just fosters dependence on me which is also not ethical. Instead we look at how we can enrich their social circle and this is unfortunately often difficult because of the whole “third space collapse” thing in the USA where public spaces for socialization are dead, based around alcohol, for young people, or cost prohibitive. I don’t have a great answer at this point (classic therapist, ha!)
I understand why people increasingly turn to the internet for socialization. But at least find actual people online and not robots that collect data on you to sell
I think the robot can be used for validating feelings if you're in a panic spiral or something and need something to turn to instantly. Not much else. Using it with an actual therapist/psychologist seems fine to me. Using it without it would def validate maladaptive behaviours.
I can't really blame people for not turning to like, online support groups instead, since every online support group i've tried just ended up being uber gatekeep-y
Using an online AI run by capitalists who will definitely use your data both to train the AI and to target ads at you specifically for this kind of thing is bleak.
Using a locally run instance of DeepSeek with no internet connection for this is just pretty sad.
Reminds me of something...
God I wish we were at the level of holodeck. It would add some much needed bread to this circus.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Let him cook
Broccoli!!!
"I heard you have some mental health problems? Here, let me also add Pygmalion effect. You don't have to thank me. And by the way, have you heard about the white gonocide in South Africa?"
gonocide
We must save the polygons !
Totally, but to further refuse to admit it was a typo i could probably expand that conspiracy theory to include massive gonorrhea epidemic. Which to be fair did happened to the whites every now and then in history.
Write a diary. Talk to yourself every now and then. Same effect as the AI has on your mental health. A diary also remembers all your personal details. No need to burn down the planet in the process.
This is the saddest fucking world we live in
“Wow thats so sad to hear that you got laid off, but did you know that 87% of jobs are created by the top 5% companies? Try seeing the sunny side of life 🔆“
Could AI therapy be a solution to the mental health crisis?
No.
Glad we had this talk.
Keep seeing this and keep feeling the need to say it. If your gonna befriend an LLM, run it on a local machine with ollama so the capatlists cant start charging you hundreds of dollars a month for your only social outlet.
Or just dont depend on an LLM for social needs.
I warned yall. Shits off my conscious now 🙂
So long and we're back to ELIZA
I can't recommend AI therapists in remotely good faith, I have no money for therapy and I'm not wise enough to take my own advice, its far too fun to whine to a homebrewed to hell 'therapist' since no way am I putting out my trauma to a poor data rater out in the world on one of the big public bots, especially they may be my coworkers 
. Dear chatbot therapist <insert most horrible, horrible childhood trauma and violence here>, no one needs to read that shit at our wages.
The worst part is the damn chatbot though my homebrew Dr. Quack is only running on a 13b is better than some RL therapists I've had, but the therapist I'm thinking of forgot my name, forgot what patient I was, and was trying to encourage me to join her weird culty church every moment she got. Or therapists immediately turning on me soon as I figured I was trans, that's a common one too.
"When Teddy Ruxbin was needed most, he was nowhere to be found"
Someone smiling at me while giving me the most dehumanizing, dismissive advice imaginable... I bet this person uses the term "nuerospicy" but refrains from saying the r-word.
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