Comment by perching_aix

My experiences are fairly limited with both, but I do have that insight available I guess.

Real therapist came first, prior to LLMs, so this was years ago. The therapist I went to didn't exactly explain to me what therapy really is and what she can do for me. We were both operating on shared expectations that she later revealed were not actually shared. When I heard from a friend after this that "in the end, you're the one who's responsible for your own mental health", it especially stuck with me. I was expecting revelatory conversations, big philosophical breakthroughs. Not how it works. Nothing like physical ailments either. There's simply no direct helping someone in that way, which was pretty rough to recognize. We're not Rubik's Cubes waiting to be solved, certainly not for now anyways. And there was and is no one who in the literal sense can actually help me.

With LLMs, I had different expectations, so the end results meshed with me better too. I'm not completely ignorant to the tech either, so that helps. The good thing is that it's always readily available, presents as high effort, generally says the right things, has infinite "patience and compassion" available, and is free. The bad thing is that everything it says feels crushingly hollow. I'm not the kind to parrot the "AI is soulless" mantra, but when it comes to these topics, it trying to cheer me up felt extremely frustrating. At the same time though, I was able to ask for a bunch of reasonable things, and would get reasonable presenting responses that I didn't think of. What am I supposed to do? Why are people like this and that? And I'd be then able to explore some coping mechanisms, habit strategies, and alternative perspectives.

I'm sure there are people who are a lot less able to treat LLMs in their place or are significantly more in need for professional therapy than I am, but I'm incredibly glad this capability exists. I really don't like weighing on my peers at the frequency I get certain thoughts. They don't deserve to have to put up with them, they have their own life going on. I want them to enjoy whatever happiness they have going on, not worry or weigh them down. It also just gets stale after a while. Not really an issue with a virtual conversational partner.