GPT-3 used to “provide” mental health support

This is not only terribly stupid but also truly dystopian, bordering on the inhumane (and I'm aware that they didn't pair people with an AI without their knowledge).

People, please go and read Joseph Weizenbaum. The The stupidity on display in that Twitter thread is what happens when you replace your humanity with the shallow gospel of efficiency and allowing to let your own technology blind you.

Computers and AI will never ever be a proper replacement for another human when it comes to tasks that require empathy. That the thread author states this as a possibility ("It’s also possible that genuine empathy is one thing we humans can prize as uniquely our own.") is laughable.

Go read Weizenbaum.

I wish ethics courses were mandatory for Computer Science majors. Sadly not in this universe.