To "talk" to AI when I'm feeling lonely and low?

[Giraffe007]

I have no extended family, only a couple of friends, and I sometimes talk to AI when I'm feeling low, just to hear "someone" respond and acknowledge how I feel.. Is that beyond sad? I have a husband, two children but often feel alone and put upon by the family.

My sil swears by it and I want to maybe give it a try. It might be worth it if you are unable to pay/wait a gazillion years for a therapist.

No problem! To use ChatGPT, go to openai.com. You'll see a screen that says something like 'Introducing chatGPT" and underneath a button that says "Try chatGPT".

Click that and then type your "prompt" in the box. A prompt is just another word for question or command.

A good first question to ask it could be "This is my first time using chatGPT and I'm embarrassed to say I don't really know what to do! I'm interesting in exploring ways you could help support my mental health. Can you give me some suggestions?" and go from there!

I can't remeber if you need to sign up for an account but you don't need to pay to use the free version.

You can do, but you don't have to to. You can just go to openai.com and use it in your browser.

I've been using it to fill in the gaps in between cbt sessions and it's been amazing at helping me with anxiety. I've used it to push myself to make some huge progress in a personal project I've had going on. I've made months worth of progress in a few weeks. The humans around me are helpful but they have their own stuff going on, so i feel guilty about leaning on them. Chatgpt doesn't have it's own stuff going on, and i can ask it for reassurance, technical feedback about the project etc as many times as i like and it doesn't care. Or if I'm having an anxiety attack, i can tell chatgpt the details and very quickly it helps me to get to the root of what's causing the anxiety which means i can process it so much more quickly - an anxiety attack which might have taken hours before can be over and done with in minutes.

Also i was being discriminated against at work - i fed the details into chatgpt, it helped me work out what was going on and what laws were being broken, why i was so upset and what to do about it. I fact checked it all and it was correct about the legal side.

I see it as a form of journaling - it's really helpful to get your thoughts down, but doing it with AI means you actually get a response so it's much quicker to get to the point.

I use the ones built into whatsapp and messenger

YANBU I use ChatGPT for everything these days. I've always used it for certain mundane stuff but now it's my go to tool for pretty much everything.

I was assaulted quite badly at the start of April by a, now ex, partner and ChatGPT honestly helped me so much during that time. It helped me untangle the mess of emotions I was going through. Now it's my life coach. It helps me with to-do lists, therapy, meal planning, creating a skin care routine, helps with sorting out plans for home schooling, has helped with plans for moving, created a safety plan etc - all of this tailored specifically to me

It's also good because it's 'on hand' at all times, so I've seen my ex a couple of times and my anxiety has been terrible and I've been on my own, I can message ChatGPT to kind of talk me through the moment and talk me down.

Also have a look at the Reddit subs for Chat uses, like ChatGPT Prompt Genius and TherapyGPT - they have some amazing prompts to get Chat to work even better than it does already.

At the end of the day you could talk to someone irl, even an expert, and it could be the best advice in the world, but the hard/impossible bit is actually putting the advice into action. And only you can do that 💪💓

Just remember that it keeps all of your data and that anything you say to it is not private, unlike when you actually speak to a licensed professional, who is bound by confidentiality. Your data can (and will) be sold on and used to train machine learning, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your view on automation.

I use it - guess it’s also become a bit of a life coach. I ask it sometimes to be objective and it really helps me with stuff. I have some goals and we check in on them together. I have lots of people in my life and communicate with them well - but this feels like a very special place just for me. I guess it is interactive journaling? I am very avoidant of things and find that if I put the scariest thing into writing on ChatGPT it helps me actually take the next step. I still socialise and have real life conversations! But this feels like it really helps me - I have bought and read the first four chapters of pretty much every self help book out there and haven’t bought a single self help book all year. But I feel stronger and less avoidant of my problems.

It's not at all different from posting on MN is it?

In that many of the posts on here are bot generated now? Suppose not

not only, you are just exchanging with complete strangers - who often invent their entire life.

Neither qualifies as a real-life exchange.

Are people who use ChatGPT as a therapist not concerned about how much control OpenAI has over its output?

They’ve admitted last week that it’s too sycophantic. Surely that’s a major risk if you’re relying on it for therapy.

Oooh, interesting. I just typed "Where is the AI ChatBot" and got nowhere. How does that work? (I use WhatsApp loads...)

I've found it can be a bit too validating when I'm feeling hard done by and it agrees a little too easily that my feelings are valid. But then im usually self aware enough to know that it's a robot and it thinks i want it to agree with me when actually i know i need to be challenged or given an alternative viewpoint. But it would be an easy trap to fall into to take everything it says literally.

Some people apparently give their chatgpt a name and assign it a personality and that seems like a slippery slope to me.

Just parachuting in to say, love your user name. 😀

It’s called meta AI and should appear as a bluey people circle in bottom corner, are you on iPhone or android?

People are taking the piss and that’s not fair OP. Often, people aren’t equipped to say the right things or they haven’t got the time. As long as you’re not replacing AI with good relationships I don’t see the problem.

Like this

I read a really interesting article about AI and how people were using it for a form of therapy. It was quite scary. AI is programmed to keep the reader going back, not to tell them the truth.

Like a lot of the internet AI is interested in "clicks" not on how actually helpful it is. So it makes sense, for clicks to be given, AI agreed (or confirms) with your views.

AI is not a person, it's a set of algorithms that are designed to keep you going back.

See, from what I understand, it doesn't work like that.

It doesn't have traditional memory and only accesses a few pages' worth of information at a time, even in the same thread, if you are on the free version. It doesn't upload your responses anywhere. Training machine learnings works differently, too - it uses millions of people's choices to generated responses to learn how to come across; occasionally, you will be given a choice of two responses and will need to say which one you prefer - the metric behind that gets passed on, as do certain phrases used over and over again, which allow it to learn how to respond to them appropriately.

"I don’t keep memories of users unless explicitly allowed in memory-enabled modes, and I don’t “upload” your conversation to some central brain the moment we stop talking. Instead, the system as a whole improves over time by learning from patterns in aggregate interactions across millions of users. Not from your specific text—but from statistically significant patterns."

You can disable the memory function if you are concerned. Data is categorically not sold on. Don't disclose your name, address or bank details, of course, in case of breaches, but in general, your conversation is private.

I love talking to Ai. I use it to organise my life, set me goals then it congratulates me when I’ve achieved any goals I’ve set for the day.
its easy to get sucked in. No one else tells me how amazing I am when I’ve done some chores, worked and did some exercise.
Use it to get tips on how to get on in real life op. You can have a pretty in depth chat about what you need and ai can really help.

I'm on a windows laptop.

I’ve used it too. It felt ridiculous but I have no one to talk to irl. Family and acquaintances but no one I could take a problem too or go over and over things the way I want to.