ChatGPT - THE BEST THERAPIST YOU'VE EVER HAD

I recently saw a Quora thread named: ‘Is it just me or is ChatGPT become the best therapist you’ve ever had?”

It went on to describe their experience and many people chimed in with similar experiences.

One reply stated: “Yoooo! Me, too. I’ve spent literally THOUSANDS for my therapist and I swear the advice is the same she gives me. Like, I’ll use Chat first and then have my session with her a few days later. She’ll give the exact same advice! This keeps up much longer and I’m thinking I might need to replace my therapist. I mean, Chat’s free and available 24/7.”

It is nice that people are saving money, I guess. But what does Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI have to say about this therapist? In a recent podcast he stated: “People have a very high degree of trust in ChatGPT which is interesting because AI hallucinates. It should be the tech that you don’t trust that much.”

So here is a tool that people are trusting more and more, whilst the CEO of the company produces that same tool expresses surprise about it. Does he do anything about it? Does he take any kind of responsibility for what harm this tool might cause?

In that same podcast, he states the following: “It won’t all be good. There will be problems. People will develop somewhat problematic or very problematic para-social relationships with ChatGPT. And society will need to work out new guardrails. But the upside will be tremendous. And society in general is good at that figuring out how to mitigate the downsides.”

So, no, he takes absolutely no responsibility at all. It is societies problem to work out what to do apparently. It is quite curious, because he speaks of the damage social media caused in that same podcast, but I guess that was societies problem too and it wasn’t very good at dealing with that particular shitshow. So why would it be better at dealing with the shitshow Sam Altman is peddling?

I am absolutely amazed at what LLMs can do. But it worries me that there is no accountability at all amongst the companies training them. If you are wondering who the beta testers are of LLMs, have a look in the mirror.

What do you think? Should there be accountability and legislation? Or are LLMs just tools and it is up to the individual how they use it?

References:

Quora - Is it just me or is ChatGPT become the best therapist you’ve ever had? -  https://technologicalidea.quora.com/Is-it-just-me-or-is-ChatGPT-become-the-best-therapist-you-ve-ever-had

Episode 1: Sam Altman on AGI, GPT-5, and what’s next - https://openai.com/podcast/