Comment by lowsong
6 days ago
I'd hope it was obvious I wasn't referring to the user. You shouldn't prosecute a person using a tool that wasn't intended for that function on themselves, in the same way you can't prosecute a person for performing 'surgery' on themselves without medical knowledge or the right tools.
I mean we should prosecute companies or individuals positioning LLMs as therapy tools, suggesting that they can be replacements for therapy, or are appropriate for medical use at all. It's medical malpractice and misrepresentation, pure and simple.
Literally nobody is doing what you are saying. People are using LLMs for therapy because that's an immediate and obvious thing to do.
> Literally nobody is doing what you are saying.
The paper we're discussing is literally about this. It's the second sentence in the abstract: "In this paper, we investigate the use of LLMs to replace mental health providers, a use case promoted in the tech startup and research space."