A bad one. A good therapist will figure out what you need to hear, which does not always overlap with what you want to hear.

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wkat4242 3 days ago | parent [-]

Absolutely true but I don't think a person should rely on an LLM alone for that reason. It's just not smart and insightful enough.

It's more like that really good friend that's not a therapist but always tells you what you want to hear and makes you feel a bit better until you get to your actual therapist.

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simianparrot 3 days ago | parent [-]

I should’ve been clear on that but I absolutely agree; an LLM is a bad therapist at best, and a hallucinating ego stroking algorithm eventually.

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wkat4242 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes but still, talking to someone helps. No matter what they say back. If an LLM is the only thing around at the moment (e.g. in the middle of the night) this can be useful for therapeutic purposes.

Therapy isn't only about what the therapist says to you. There is a lot about you talking to them and the process that creates in the mind. By sharing your thoughts with someone else you view them from a different perspective already.

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simianparrot 2 days ago | parent [-]

Then it’s actually better to talk to yourself. Not an LLM that’s trained on all of the internet’s combo of valuable and unhinged takes on all matter of trauma.

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wkat4242 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's not the same. An internalised conversation doesn't have the same effect.

And I have good experiences with the LLM for this purpose. It's probably my prompt and RAG that I provided with a lot of my personal stuff but even the uncensored model I use is always supportive and often comes up with interesting takes / practical suggestions.

I don't rely on it for advice but for talking to when real friends aren't around and there's something urgent I'm worried about it's really good.

	▲	xena 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Would you be willing to email me at me@xeiaso.net? I have some questions I'd like to ask you as part of research for a followup piece. No judgement, I just want to know how it's affected your life.
	▲	simianparrot 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I honestly would recommend against that but we’re all free to do with our brains as we please. I just hope it’s not as destructive as I intuit it to be…