Comment by roxolotl

One of the big dangers of LLMs is that they are somewhat effective and (relatively) cheap. That causes a lot of people to think that economies of scale negate the downsides. As many comments are saying it is true that are not nearly enough therapists, largely as evidenced by cost and prevalence of mental illness.

The problem is an 80% solution to mental illness is worthless, or even harmful, especially at scale. There’s more and more articles of llm influenced delusions showcasing the dangers of these tools especially to the vulnerable. If the success rate is genuinely 80% but the downside is the 20% are worse off to the point of maybe killing themselves I don’t think that’s a real solution to a problem.

Could a good llm therapist exist? Sure. But the argument that because we have not enough therapists we should unleash untested methods on people is unsound and dangerous.