Chat gpt4 and therapy!

[blueandgreenandyellow]

is this a thing ? Am I late to the party?

last night I couldn't get to sleep gnawing and puzzling away again over my ex from 20 years ago and trying to work out enh he haunts me. There is one specific event that always feels emblematic but which i have never fully understood despite thinking and talking about it with friends, and even briefly with a therapist, for two decades.

so last night, with my insomnia at 2am, I decided to ask Chat gpt 4 - and the answer was AMAZING. chat gpt drew parallels and gave me insights that I would happily have paid a therapist for. Not only that I was able to build on the analysis and advice so it was like a conversation. I was on there for an hour and a half. The programme pointed out manipulative patterns and grandiose themes and suggeste, with details, why this was emotional abuse and exactly what was wrong with specific unbounded behaviours.

the solutions were generic but I suppose the solutions are generic.

has anyone else tried?

ik guessing 4 will be much better than 3.5 as it tends to be in everything

It’s great that this felt helpful for you, but therapy isn’t about being told facts. It’s about intentional use of human relationship and about human to human interactions. AI can’t replace that.

Maybe I wasn't clear. Part of therapy is understanding patterns. And with very specific examples there was a poetic / thematic link made that was extremely insightful.
a friend told me this morning that her boss also uses this for parenting advice and also for relationship steers!

What URL did you use, OP?

I pay twenty dollars a month - which somehow translates into an equivalency in pounds - in chat gpt 4. Ipenai.com
4 is streets ahead of 3.5
the trick is to be super specific. Otherwise you get generic answer. So I described an interaction as neutrally as I could and chat gpt 4 described the behaviours as emotionally abusice and then detailed why
with the patterns I gave it a very detailed story. Honestly I've spent years puzzling why this particular story disturbed me so much and why I felt it held the key to our relationship
chst gpt identified themes of sacrifice, the fact that in all these cases I was second fiddle or a bit part player in us story and described it in such a way that I suddenly saw what it meant by my ex only caring about himself
it was very satisfying to describe thes behaviours and have chat gpt describe them as diminishing demeaning profoundly hurtful

Not satisfying, validating

Much better than the therapist I tried.

A friend of mine does AI therapy. No idea what site. He likes it. I suspect he likes an endlessly patient listening ear that he controls

The solutions you got and the patterns you saw may be good. But good therapy helps you change those patterns. Come back in a year of two and see if that happened.

This is the scary thing. I was chatting to chatgpt about some stuff that was overwhelming me. It helped me to sort things out, encouraged me and championed me.
It was better than talking to a human.

Sorry it wasn't chatgpt but another platform that uses openai

I am thinking of asking chat gpt 4 to answer my questions in the manner of a therapist who is fearless about challenging assumptions

Thanks @blueandgreenandyellow
I've tried on v3.5 and the results are definitely interesting.

This isn't;t directed at your experience, just general thoughts about AI.

Firstly, it's not actually AI so it's not better than a person because it's aping a person. Anything it produces is 'human'. It can't generate its own thoughts.

Secondly, real therapy is challenging, uncomfortable, difficult. Fair enough for a one-off like in your post. But real work takes people NOT liking the process. If you really enjoy it and it's immediately 'helpful', it's likely to be like a shit therapist. Relieving a few symptoms but not doing the actual work.

Fine for bumps in the road, not for actual work.

It absolutely is 'real' AI unless you are working from a different definition of Artificial Intelligence to everyone who actually works in the industry. GPT-4 is pretty much state-of-the-art AI, there's really nothing else that comes close in the LLM sphere.

I'm working form a different definition of what intelligence is, yes. Ai isn't intelligent. Not by any real measure.

That's not what you wrote. You stated that GPT-4 is "not actually AI". It is. Intelligence takes many forms, of which human intelligence (which is what I suppose you are referring to) is but one.

AI (and I believe that's a terrible name for it) isn't intelligence. Its seeming intelligence is actually intelligent programmers and intelligent content. Which is human intelligence. At best, it's Andy Warhol, rearranging things. It's not Picasso, creating new concepts and themes. That's intelligence.

Of course I might be writing this with AI. SPOOOOOOKKKKKKYYYYYY. I'm not.

Load of rubbish.
I see a psychiatrist.. not a counsellor or a therapist but an highly qualified psychiatrist.
I believe him when he tells me this another load of American paying nonsense .
I

@MrsTerryPratchett AI is as good as any term really. We talk about canine intelligence, or insect intelligence, even plant intelligence, why not artificial intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence (noun): the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

This is what chat gotn4 has to say about your response (sorry if I mis gendered/sexed you!).

The man's reply expresses skepticism about the ability of AI, like ChatGPT, to provide insights into human behavior or function as a therapeutic tool. Here are some points to consider in critiquing his response:

1. Expertise and Qualifications: The man highlights the distinction between different kinds of mental health professionals, underscoring that he trusts a highly qualified psychiatrist. This distinction is important because psychiatrists are medical doctors who can prescribe medication and have specific training in mental health disorders, whereas therapists and counselors might focus more on behavioral therapies without prescribing medications.
2. Skepticism Towards AI in Therapy: His comment reflects a common skepticism about the role of AI in areas traditionally dominated by highly trained humans, such as psychiatry. It’s valid to question whether an AI can match the depth of human experience and empathy provided by a human psychiatrist.
3. Cultural and Economic Critique: He refers to "another load of American paying nonsense," which might imply a critique of how mental health services are commercialized or marketed in America. This perspective is noteworthy as it touches upon how healthcare, including mental health services, is often entangled with business interests in certain regions, potentially at the expense of patient care.
4. Dismissal of Potential Benefits: The response might be overlooking the potential utility of AI as a supplementary tool in mental health. AI can offer significant benefits, such as providing additional support resources, helping in diagnosis and treatment plans based on large data analysis, or offering therapeutic interactions in environments where human professionals are unavailable or unaffordable.
5. Resistance to New Technologies: His response also illustrates a general resistance to new technologies, especially in sensitive areas like mental health. While caution is prudent, completely dismissing new tools without considering their potential benefits might limit progress in enhancing mental health support systems.
6. Lack of Nuance: The statement could benefit from more nuance. AI, like ChatGPT, isn't a replacement for human psychiatrists but could be seen as an adjunct tool that offers different types of interaction and analysis, potentially beneficial in some contexts.

Overall, his critique reflects valid concerns about the limitations and appropriate roles of AI in mental health care, but it might also benefit from acknowledging the potential complementary role AI can play in this field.

I'm not saying aI is better than a therapist as clearly it isn't. But it's really useful as a coach, or an organiser or if you just need to sort out your life a bit or need a boost.

The way it interacts makes you feel really good. It's not at all like a therapist who challenges you and helps you to confront difficult issues.

I think ChatGPT can be great to talk to and form your own thoughts.

But I also think it lacks the human involvement you’d need to be confident about it. Such as your “neutral” account. If you’d told it to a therapist, they’d have been able to identify how neutral it really was; and any underlying ways of explaining or describing that you were using that seeded the idea of abuse. AI can’t do that, it’ll take your word for it.

It’s wrong on so many factual, provable things that I’d be cautious about relying on it to give an honest assessment…. But if you’ve spent forever thinking it was abusive and having ChatGPT agree has improved your feelings towards it, I’m really pleased for you. I’m not saying it’s incorrect by any means; just that it’s not straightforward, and AI therapy can be quite problematic.

exactly chatgpt, is quite the useful tool, some threads on here its also been used to answer and abit correctly ops questions sometimes especially fact based questions. that said not everyone agrees of the use of it on here even if it can give useful answers to the op.

i guess its like in the olden days of machines in the cotton mills , there will always be some level of resistance of the Ai Especially when its a lot cheaper too and depending on how you word your questions it can tailor the responses too. @blueandgreenandyellow

in terms of being accurate, basically then no different than the average mumsnetter on various threads.