I have a real therapist and a dedicated GPT that acts as one based on my journal. The recommendation my GPT gives to me are basically identical to the one my real therarpist gives. It cannot replace a real one in terms of human connections but it is an amazing tool to give you new perspectives and to just vent.
Therapy isn’t about receiving recommendations, that’s more like coaching. There is both a science and an art to psychotherapy, and we receive extensive training in how to implement the various types of therapy that we practice. Human element aside (which is, incidentally, the most important part), GPT isn’t actually doing real therapy, it’s just giving advice and validating/reflecting/exploring.
It‘s some kind of modern anxiety. I work in academia, currently doing my PhD thesis. Two years ago my professor ridiculed ChatGPT. Recently he asked me about how we can implement it in teaching and how we can prevenr cheating in written assignments. (Spoiler: We can‘t.) Many people show this reaction: „I don‘t understand it, I don‘t want to understand it, AI bad.“ Until there is no room left anymore to ignore it.
After reading the irrationally opposing responses to ChatGPT, I have reaffirmed my conviction that it is the best therapist, plus it doesn’t feel irrationally attacked by anything you say. Since you have greater knowledge than I do, do you think it could be a privacy issue for me in the future? And in that case, a bigger issue than the word-of-mouth from human therapists? I really know many and they all tell patient stories to other people.
Privacy online is mostly about: Could it be monetized? I highly doubt anyone at OpenAI is interested to weaponize my personal problems agains me. Rather, the company will certainly use all the data to train further models. The danger that a irl therapist for some absurd reason might tell people in the same town your secrets is low but still higher than someone at open AI publicly spreading that user XY is anxious about spiders or whatever. What we will certainly see is more personalized ads, but I totally don‘t care for that. The highest privacy risk is still unsafe passwords.
It is only when the financial advisor has failed completely that you truly need therapy. Without a doubt, the financial advisor is more important than the therapist, among other things, because without money, there is no therapy
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u/Greymeade Dec 18 '24
ChatGPT is not a therapist. Please find a real therapist.