Comment by rglover
7 days ago
As long as the LLM isn't steering the "patient" toward self-harm or helping to rationalize other self-destructive behavior, I don't see the issue. The people who need therapy the most often can't afford it if their healthcare won't cover it (U.S.-centric POV here).
Is it dystopian as hell? Yep. But I'd much rather someone get _some_ help (potentially enough to make them feel better—even temporarily) than to be left to fend for themselves in the world.
Dystopias are usually about things getting worse than the they are now, or at least worse than they were at some point in time.
Was there some point in time when therapy was available to everybody who needed it? Or may be we just got more upset about it because it actually got more available than before, got normalised and became an expectation?
For me, the "dystopia" factor is that the structure of society is such where something that is arguably essential for the majority of people is ironically inaccessible without a cheap shortcut like an LLM.
IMO, it's less about an entitlement to and more about an accessibility of sort of problem. Funny enough, that infrastructure existing (in theory) was why mental hospitals started to close down in favor of "mental health clinics" back in the day [1].
[1] https://archive.ph/NJyr3 (New York Times—1984)
> something that is arguably essential for the majority of people
Our perception of this changes with time, radically. A few ages ago a chair would have seemed unneeded luxury for most of the world's population.
> Funny enough, that infrastructure existing (in theory) was why mental hospitals started to close down in favor of "mental health clinics" back in the day [1].
Mental hospitals are treating cases much more severe and rare (thankfully) that most of modern therapy. One hour of gestalt therapy a week will not do any good for a violent schizophrenic in a psychotic episode.