For the talking aspect, its nothing very useful, regardless of who it is. Is the “oh yeah that must be so hard for you”, either read from an instruction manual or reduce things down to “just go outside and take a walk” “just do x”.
It sounds like you have no idea WTF you’re talking about. This is the response I would expect from someone that has just heard from other people that have never gone to a therapist, what therapy is.
I’m certainly not a proponent of AI, but AI for therapy is arguably the absolute worst use case. Therapists and psychiatrists are medically trained to work in their professions. As far as drugs, yea many times it’s not the right drug it disagree on the first attempt because everyone is different and not everyone responds the same way to the same drug or dosage.
Depression is a condition that is crippling, and for some, anti depressants are the solution due to chemical imbalances. I personally know a handful of people that have gone through the ringer to find what works for them, and they are still alive today because of it. No AI can do that.
I do agree that the cost is an unfortunate hurdle, and I personally have been affected by that. Some non empathic and non human AI that will just add likely tell a person to kill themselves as give God advice is not a solution.
If you had cancer, would you turn to some non profit AI to give you a treatment, or would you go to an oncologist instead? It’s the exact same thing when dealing with mental issues.
This is the problem. AI isn’t that. There is no knowledge in an LLM. It’s impossible to train them in such a manner as how you see them being beneficial. Using it as a bridge is like getting blackout drunk to get to the next day. For the people that think they’re finding solutions, it’s more of an addiction.
This is therapy in a nutshell. Being able to do that effectively takes special training and situational awareness that LLMs can’t do. In your last post, specifically the part I quoted in my response, was you griefing therapy for exactly what your saying LLMs can do.
I encourage you to look into the real world anecdotes of people that have used AI for this purpose, or the people that have created significant others.
It would be great if it were possible for someone that’s struggling to ask a question of their computer and get all of the answers, but that’s nothing but wishful thinking. Even if the perfect model were trained with the perfect material, and somehow had no bias, it still wouldn’t be a bad choice, inherently because the technology just isn’t capable of doing what you’re looking for. It requires a human mind with empathy and true understanding to be able to guide someone, not a computer that is finding the closest word match based on a users input. There’s no intelligence or understanding in AI, just best guess to the next word.