To think ChatGPT et al will put lots of counsellors and therapists out of business

[GPTtherapist]

I live in significant long term trauma due to a primary cause and substantial sub-causes. This is due to a usual combination of some quite unusual factors and I find most people do not have the experience or knowledge to understand them. Over the years I have seen a number of different counsellors/ therapists and support workers, most of whom are pretty useless and some who have made things substantially worse. Some have been clearly judgemental which has been enormously painful.

Last night when I was close to breaking down altogether, I used Chat GPT and it was brilliant. It was able to expand on what I said in a way that mimicked deep understanding and compassion for what I am going through. I actually cried at being so 'heard' and understood. Having the words to express so clearly what I experience was, well I can't put in words how it felt after all these years. It was also able to pick out parts of what I said to reflect back positive, encouraging things about myself. It was able to offer some suggestions which were actually helpful and which I am going to try as a coping mechanism. Best of all for someone like me, with huge issues around shame, I could speak openly and honestly about how I felt without any fear or shame around what the therapist might think of me.

So despite Chat GPT not being a person, I found I was able to get the emotional benefits as if it were a person understanding me, without the disbenefits of it being a person I might feel ashamed to tell how I feel.

Also, unlike a human therapist, it remembers and is able to respond to everything you say.

It was hands down better than nearly all human therapists/ counsellors/ support workers I have seen.

And it was free.

I realise for those able to afford long-term intensely skilled therapy for complex issues, a skilled experienced therapist is far preferable.

But in my experience, and that of many others, most therapists are pretty poor and expensive.

So surely Chat GPT will become a first point of call for many with mental health issues which will reduce the number of those who decide they need a human therapist?

Exactly! It’s highly dangerous. Just because some of you enjoy the “parroting back” model of therapy doesn’t mean it’s safe for wider use.

There was already a lawsuit in 2024 of an AI chat bot pushing a young boy to suicide. With more people turning to these services in varying degrees of mental distress and emergency it’s only going to get worse.

You say the client is the feedback loop, but don't you think, OP, that there's something socially dangerous about replicating the feeling of being "heard" when actually we aren't being "heard" at all? We're being affirmed. Actually being heard involves being affirmed, confronted, challenged, etc. That's how humans live together. And that feeling can be extremely intense and genuine, as you've discovered.

As an aside, before I worked for the organisation I do now, I applied for a job as an AI trainer. I never got to interview stage because their bot crashed and lost everyone's details. Irony.

I do actually agree that there are a lot of crap therapists about. I've had them myself. I have had good ones too but the bad outweigh them. I do have a good one at the moment who I have got through my work.

The one I had while training to be a counsellor was abso-fucking-lutely-bloody-useless.

I have used AI and I have (very quickly) discovered where its limitations are. That's why I'm sceptical of people who think sprinkling AI pixie dust on everything is a good thing.

There have already been children driven to try to murder their parents by encouragement from a chatbot (Character.AI), as well as multiple suicides egged on by AI. I don’t see many flesh and blood therapists encouraging family annihilators.

Oh well, guess it is just a “current flaw at a product in early development” as OP says, so who cares?

Not everybody has access to a therapist. Therapy is very expensive and out of financial reach for most. NHS therapy, if you're lucky enough to be accepted for it, involves a long wait and I can't be the only one whose over-the-phone therapist was so dreadful that I withdrew from the service and spent the following month after my initial call in a complete downward spiral.

ChatGPT may never be as good as a great human therapist. But it may well be a better alternative to poor therapy or no therapy, which is what most people actually have access to. I think it's far too early to say with any confidence that this is "nonsense".

I agree with this. It did offer insights.

I am an AI sceptic but there are plenty of health professionals that have no empathy whatsoever. You might never find out or you find out when you've already forked out and it's too late. It's luck of the draw. It's no surprise people will turn to ChatGPT and it will happen more and more.

Yes, I think one of the best things about therapy is that therapists ask difficult questions to get you to think, but I don't think AI asks challenging questions? It just affirms. But that's not therapy.

You're not making a lot of sense here. I've absolutely also had individual sessions with therapists (especially, for some reason, the ones I was referred to many years back by my workplace's EAP), but I then just didn't go back and found someone else. I've seen three people (the two I'm currently with, and one who retired) where I currently live, all word of mouth recommendations from friends/family members who work in therapy or allied areas, and they have been transformative.

But the existence of therapists with biases and baggage is hardly a reason for trusting your MH to a bot.

This.

Anyone who thinks that GPT will replace therapists please listen to this episode of The Artificial Human: Is AI better than my therapist?
They are explaining the dangers of people in distress using AI as a crutch for AI being available 24/7, not like your therapist who you see one hour at a time, most likely once a week.. AI simulates sympathy, it initiates "conversation" but it isn't anything like a therapist. AI bot relies on algorithms, it can't get complexity of humans actions, emotions, and behaviours. Therapist may leave you uncomfortable in your feelings and emotions, whilst AI will always try to make you feel better because it is how it got designed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002dzjt

I can’t imagine a therapist with experience, reputation and a client base would be threatened by an illusion, or delusion if you will. You know this is an AI tool; you know it works to answer your question or to solve your problem; you also should know that it doesn’t care about you; it doesn’t feel at all. Anyone can pretend their Volvo is a Ferrari, but it’s not. If it makes them feel better to pretend it is, that’s great. But AI is not able to offer the authenticity of a human being supporting and caring about another. It’s artificial, not authentic.

ChatGPT may never be as good as a great human therapist. But it may well be a better alternative to poor therapy or no therapy

Yeah this. Research into AI and creativity has had AI performing better on measures of creativity than 97% of humans (if I remember the percentage correctly). Not as good as the best humans, but better than many is probably where it is at the moment and its only going to get better.

Is it saying what you need or what you want to hear? Not all counselling is agreeing with you. Did you get a plan of what to do going forward, how to cope, etc, or just a hand hold? It really doesn't know what it is doing, just repeating what it has garnered from the internet. I also have no idea where these 'private' chats end up, anything you put out there on the internet you should assume is public, I would be very wary of baring my soul out on the cloud.

Of course it has limitations.

I honestly dont' understand this mindset of "it has limitations so it's not a useful tool." My airfryer is amazing, but has limitations. Public transport is astonishingly important, but it has limitations. I could go on. This is normal.

It’s a ROBOT. It has no empathy. It reflects back what it put in, and can appear to provide care and concern, but it is incapable of either.

Be very careful if you use it to support you with physical or mental health. It might give the feeling of caring and support but it is a pure simulation.

It has helped me with OCD to be fair. It’s able to give me quick and simple strategies and little exercises etc. much better than trawling through some of the self-help books I’ve tried which are 90% filler.

I have previously had CBT on the NHS years ago and a lot of it is similar.

I agree that a really good, experienced established therapist doesn't need to feel threatened. I can think of a therapist I used in the past who I would vastly rate over AI. But most aren't like that. And in my current circumstances, it was better than the humans I can access.

I am aware that I used it once and it may prove limited over following weeks or months if I keep using it. But I surprised by how good it was. And its in its infancy.

Humans are only biological machines after all. The better AI gets at learning in the way humans do, the better it will get at this.

AI only exists because of what we fed it to begin with. You talk about creativity, but still all AI “art” is made up of stolen artwork from unpaid human artists, mixed with other stolen artwork from other unpaid human artists. It’s not new or original or indeed its own “creation” and this has been provable time and time again. I know a lot of artists personally (in my profession) who have found almost their exact identical artwork being sold as a new “AI IMAGE” and therefore they don’t get any credit or money from its then mass production and profit. They did not consent to their work being fed into AI but they are paying the price for having their work emulated by it.

AI therapy is much the same. It’s churning out what it’s been told is the best thing to say in response and learning from there. Unfortunately as it isn’t human it can’t tell the difference between someone a bit depressed and someone in deep psychosis. Hence it reaffirming believes and manic episodes and putting the most vulnerable people in extreme danger, as well as making them further distrustful of other people.

One of my best friends is an art psychotherapist - and a damn good one, at that. When I hear her talking about the difference she's seeing with clients, and how they've changed for the better from their first session with her, I struggle to imagine how ChatGPT can come close to achieving that. It can't.

I think we should still be very wary of AI. We still don't know yet what effects it is having on people, but there are more than a few concerning stories (some of which have been shared in this thread) that would never, ever happen with a professional human therapist.

And let's not forget that there's no environmental damage from a real therapist either. It's a depressing state of affairs that so many people are unaware of just how wasteful AI is - and if AI was ever to replace human therapists completely, we'd probably be facing a massive shortage of water before long anyway.

Human therapists will also be mimicking empathy for clients they may not feel sympathetic towards. I am very aware with human therapists that I am paying them to display empathy and caring. They are not going to keep caring when the £60 stops going into their bank account, either from me or a charity/NHS if I get it for free at point of use.
I don't know what the human therapist really thinks of me. At least I know where I am with AI.

I hope you find a good therapist.
I don't understand AI. I have no interest in it for the moment.
I'll have no choice soon.
Why are they using AI with the impact on the environment and human brain cells.

Sure, but let's not pretend that it's in any way similar, and that it might not in fact be very dangerous for someone dealing with the extra MH challenges that poverty, or comparative poverty, can cause or exacerbate.

That's why I say that you seem to know very little about therapy. I'm certainly not paying therapists to 'mimic' empathy for me. And I don't particularly mind what they think of me.