zlacker

>>Jimmc4+(OP)
It is easy to point to loopy theories around superalignment, p(doom), etc. But you don't have to be hopped up on sci-fi to oppose something like GPT-4o. Low-latency response time is fine. The faking of emotions and overt references to Her (along with the suspiciously-timed relaxation of pornographic generations) are not fine. I suspect Altman/Brockman/Murati intended for this thing to be dangerous for mentally unwell users, using the exact same logic as tobacco companies.

>>nickle+491
One could also say that therapists prey on lonely people who pay them to talk to them and seem like they’re genuinely interested in them, when the therapist wouldn’t bother having a connection with these people once they stop paying. Which I suppose is true from a certain point of view. But from another point of view, sometimes people feel like they don’t have close friends or family to talk to and need something, even if it’s not a genuine love or friendship.

>>bnralt+Dg1
This is implying that therapy is nothing more than someone to talk to; if that’s your experience with therapy, then you should get another therapist.

>>kettro+rh1
I think the preying part of therapy is that there's just no defined stop condition. There's no such thing as "healthy" in mental health. You get chemo until you go into remission or you die. You take blood pressure meds until you have a better lifestyle and body composition and don't need them anymore, etc. There's no analogue for "you're healthy now, go away so I can help others", and so therapy goes on forever until the patient stops for whatever reason.

>>naaski+Tj1
I sometimes recommend Dr David Burns' Feeling Good podcast[1], and he is big on measuring and testing and stop points. Instead of 'tell me about your mother' his style of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is called TEAMS in which the T stands for Testing, and it involves:

- Patient choosing a specific mood problem/feeling they want to work on.

- A mood survey, where the patient rates their own level of e.g. anxiety, depression, fear, hopelessness. (e.g. out of 5 or 10).

- Therapy session, following his TEAMS CBT structure. Including patient choosing how much fear they'd like to feel (e.g. they want to keep a little bit of fear so they don't endanger themselves, but don't want to be overwhelmed by fear, 5% or 20%, say).

- A repeat of the mood survey, where the patient re-assesses themselves to see if anything has improved. There's no units on the measures because it's self-reported, the patient knows if the fear is unchanged, a little less, a lot less, almost gone, completely gone, and that's what matters.

That gives them feedback; if there is improvement within a session they know something in the session helped, if several sessions go by with no improvement they know it and can change things up and move away from those unhelpful approaches in future with other patients, and if there is good improvement - patient is self-reporting that they are no longer hopeless about their relationship status, or afraid of social situations, or depressed, to the level they want, then therapy can stop.

He's adamant that a single 2hr session is enough to make a significant change in many common mood disorders[2], and this "therapy needs to take 10 years" is a bad pattern and therapists who don't take mood surveys and before and after every session are flying blind. With feedback on every session and decades of experience, he has identified a lot of techniques and ways to use them which actually do help people's moods change. I liken it to the invention of test cases and debuggers (and looking at the output from them).

[1] Quick list: https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/ more detailed database: https://feelinggood.com/podcast-database/

[2] no, internet cynic, obviously not everything and presumably not whatever it is you have.