Comment by palmotea
7 days ago
> Having simpler (but less effective) solutions widely available is probably a good thing.
And those solutions are not LLMs. It's been shown elsewhere (and in the OP, it seems) that LLMs are very bad therapists, severe malpractice bad.
So you're saying that there are no professional therapists that can do the same bad? I think that the issue is more subtle, and as with everything, nothing is really black and white.
I have, for instance, used LLMs a couple of times to assess and reflect over the few situations I have been questioning myself about recently. And I thought it did really well, much better than what most of my well-thought friends would do. Some proper advice and reflection. I did this in 1hr of my spare time completely randomly (before I went to a sleep) and without extra time spent on finding the (right) therapist, waiting on the list, going physically into his/her office, spending that 1hr there, and finally paying some cash. So, for me in this particular case this was an obvious win.
Professional therapists have to have malpractice insurance for this reason. LLMs currently don't.
I don't think such liability is really exercised all around the world, perhaps in the States it is. But how do you prove that psychotherapist's advice is what caused you the (psychological) damage? Court?