I can't wait until ChatGPT starts inserting ads into its responses. "Wow that sounds really tough. You should learn to love yourself and not be so hard on yourself when you mess up. It's a really good thing to treat yourself occasionally, such as with an ice cold Coca-Cola or maybe a large order of McDonald's French fries!"

A human therapist might not or is less likely to share any personal details about your conversations with anyone.

An AI therapist will collate, collect, catalog, store and share every single personal detail about you with the company that owns the AI and share and sell all your data to the highest bidder.

What could go wrong?

AI-Fueled Spiritual Delusions Are Destroying Human Relationships - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

Is this any bleaker than forming a parasocial relationship with someone you see on your screen?

Am I old fashioned for wanting to talk to real humans instead?

The only people that think this will help are people that don't know what therapy is. At best, this is pacification and certainly not any insightful incision into your actual problems. And the reason friends are unable to allow casual emotion venting is because we have so much stupid shit like this plastering over a myriad of very serious issues.

I suppose this can be mitigated by installing a local LLM that doesn't phone home. But there's still a risk of getting downright bad advice since so many LLM's just tell their users they're always right or twist the facts to fit that view.

I've been guilty of this as well, I've used ChatGPT as a "therapist" before. It actually gives decently helpful advice, compared to what's out there available after a google search. But I'm fully aware of the risks "down the road", so to speak.

If the title is a question, the answer is no

I've tried this ai therapist thing, and it's awful. It's ok to help you work out what you're thinking, but absymal at analyzing you. I got some structured timelines back fro. It that I USED in therapy, but AI is a dangerous alternative to human therapy.

My $.02 anyway.

Oh, I know this one!

Betteridge's law of headlines.

People's lack of awareness of how important accessibility is really shows in this thread.

Privacy leaking is much lesser issue than not having anyone to talk to for many people, especially in poorer countries.

Great idea, what could possibly go wrong?

Cheaper than paying people better, I suppose.

how long will it take an 'ai' chatbot to spiral downward to bad advice, lies, insults, and/or promotion of violence and self-harm?

unlike humans, the ai listens to and remembers me to me [for the number of characters allotted]. this will help me feel seen i guess

You must know what you're doing and most people don't. It is a tool, its up to you how you use it. Many people unfortunately use it as an echo chamber or form of escapism, believing nonsense and "make beliefs" that aren't based in any science or empirical data.

If therapy is meant to pacify the masses and make us just accept life as it is then sure I guess this could work.
But hey, we love to also sell to people first that they are broken, make sure they feel bad about it and tell them they can buy their 5 minutes of happiness with food tokens.
So, I'm sure capitalists are creaming their pants at this idea. BetterHelp with their "licensed" Bob the crystal healer from Idaho, eat your heart out.

P.S. You just know this is gonna be able to prescribe medications for that extra revenue kick.

So you are actively documenting yourself sharing sensitive information about your patients?

Enter the Desolatrix

There are ways that LLMs can be used to better one's life (apparently in some software dev circles these can be and are used to make workflow more efficient) and this can also be one of them, because the part that sucks most about therapy (after the whole monetary thing) is trying to find the form of therapy that works for you, and finding a therapist that you can work with. Every human is different, and that contains both the patient and the therapist, and not everyone can just start working together right off the bat. Not to mention how long it takes for a new therapist to actually get to know you to improve the odds of the cooperation working.

Obviously I'm not saying "replace all therapists with AIs controlled by racist capitalist pigs with ulterior motives", but I have witnessed people in my own life who have had some immediate help from a fucking chatbot, which is kinda ridiculous. So in times of distress (say a borderline having such an anxiety attack that they can't calm themselves because they don't know what to do to the vicious cycle of thought and emotional response) and for immediate help a well-developed, non-capitalist LLM might be of invaluable help, especially if an actual human can't be reached if for an example (in this case) the borderline lives in a remote area and it is the middle of the night, as I can tell from personal experience it very often is. And though not every mental health emergency requires first responders on the scene or even a trip to the hospital, there is still a possibility of both being needed eventually. So a chatbot with access to necessary information in general (like techniques for self-soothing e.g. breathing exercises and so forth) and possibly even personal information (like diagnostic and medication history, though this would raise more privacy concerns to be assessed) and the capability to parse and convey them in a non-belittling way (as some doctors and nurses can be real fucking assholes at times) could/would possibly save lives.

So the problem here is capitalism, surprising no-one.