https://idfpr.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idfpr/news...
I get the impression that it is now illegal in Illinois to claim that an AI chatbot can take the place of a licensed therapist or counselor. That doesn't mean people can't do what they want with AI. It only means that counseling services can't offer AI as a cheaper replacement for a real person.
Am I wrong? This sounds good to me.
There is a specific section that relates to how a licensed professional can use AI:
Section 15. Permitted use of artificial intelligence.
(a) As used in this Section, "permitted use of artificial intelligence" means the use of artificial intelligence tools or systems by a licensed professional to assist in providing administrative support or supplementary support in therapy or psychotherapy services where the licensed professional maintains full responsibility for all interactions, outputs, and data use associated with the system and satisfies the requirements of subsection (b).
(b) No licensed professional shall be permitted to use artificial intelligence to assist in providing supplementary support in therapy or psychotherapy where the client's therapeutic session is recorded or transcribed unless:
(1) the patient or the patient's legally authorized representative is informed in writing of the following:
(A) that artificial intelligence will be used; and
(B) the specific purpose of the artificial intelligence tool or system that will be used; and
(2) the patient or the patient's legally authorized representative provides consent to the use of artificial intelligence.
Source: Illinois HB1806
https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus/FullText?GAID=18...
Whisper is good enough these days that it can be run on-device with reasonable accuracy so I don’t see an issue.
If your medical files are locked in the trunk of a car, that’s “HIPAA-compliant” until someone steals the car.
It would be nice to extend the approximate equivalent of HIPAA to all personal data processing in all cases with absolutely zero exceptions. No more "oops we had a breach, pinky promise we're sorry, don't forget to reset all your passwords".
My experience is that people tend to think its some objective level of security. But its really just the willingness to sign a BAA and then take responsibility for any breaches.
It's not obvious to me as a non-lawyer whether a chat history could be decided to be "therapy" in a courtroom. If so, this could count as a violation. Probably lots of law around this stuff for lawyers and doctors cornered into giving advice at parties already that might apply (e.g., maybe a disclaimer is enough to workaround the prohibition)?
The prohibition is mainly on accepting any payment for advertised therapy service, if not following the rules of therapy (licensure, AI guidelines).
Likewise for medicine and law.
I imagine "Pay us to talk to our friendly chat bot about your problems. (This is not licensed therapy. Seek therapy instead if you feel you need it.)" would suffice.
Defining non-medical things as medicine and requiring approval by particular private institutions in order to do them is simply corruption. I want everybody to get therapy, but there's no difference in outcomes whether you get it from a licensed therapist using some whacked out paradigm that has no real backing, or from a priest. People need someone to talk to who doesn't have unclear motives, or any motives really, other than to help. When you hand money to a therapist, that's nearly what you get. A priest has dedicated his life to this.
The only problem with therapists in that respect is that there's an obvious economic motivation to string a patient along forever. Insurance helps that by cutting people off at a certain point, but that's pretty brutal and not motivated by concern for the patient.
Also, the proposition is dubious, because there are waitlists for therapists. Plus, therapist can actually loose the license while the chatbot cant, no matter how bad the chatbot gets.
…And it turns out it has been studied with findings that AI work, but humans are better.
You know that it’s going to get used as a diagnostic tool, and you know that people are going to die because of this. Under our current medical ethics, you can’t do this. Maybe we should re-evaluate this, but that opens the door to moral hazard around cheap unreliable practices. It’s not straightforward.
What we have isn't motivated by protection from moral hazard (at least IMO). It's a guild system that restricts even vaguely related access and practices in (I'd argue) an overly broad manner.
To be clear I don't object to the guild in this case. Only to the overly broad fence surrounding it.
Unfortunately, there are already a bunch.
At least in Illinois we now have an answer, and other jurisdictions look to what has been established elsewhere when deciding their own laws, so the implications are far reaching.
It might also be a terrible idea, but we won’t find out if we make it illegal to try new things in a safe/supervised way. Not to say that what I just described would be illegal under this law; I’m not sure whether it would be. I’d expect it will discourage any Illinois-licensed therapists from trying out this kind of idea though.
Instead of the rich getting access to the best professionals, it will level the playing field. The average low level lawyer, doctor, etc are not great. How nice if everyone got top level help.
With a regulated license, there is someone to hold accountable for wantonly dangerous advice, much like there is with humans.
With respect to the former, I firmly believe that the existing LLMs should not be presented as a source for authoritative advice. Giving advice that is not authoritative is okay as long as the recipient realizes such, in the sense that it is something that people have to deal with outside of the technological realm anyhow. For example, if you ask for help for a friend you are doing so with the understanding that, as a friend, they are doing so to the best of their ability. Yet you don't automatically assume they are right. They are either right because they do the footwork for you to ensure accuracy or you check the accuracy of what they are telling you yourself. Likewise, you don't trust the advice of a stranger unless they are certified, and even that depends upon trust in the certifying body.
I think the problem with technology is that we assume it is a cure-all. While we may not automatically trust the results returned by a basic Google search, a basic Google search result coupled with an authoritative sounding name automatically sounds more accurate than a Google search result that is a blog posting. (I'm not suggesting this is the only criteria people use. You are welcome to insert your own criteria in its place.) Our trust of LLMs, as they stand today, is even worse. Few people have developed criteria beyond: it is an LLM, so it must be trustworthy; or, it is an LLM so it must not be trustworthy. And, to be fair, it is bloody difficult to develop criteria for the trustworthiness of LLMs (even arbitrary criteria) because the provide so few cues.
Then there's the bit about the person receiving the advice. There's not a huge amount we can do about that beyond encouraging people regard the results from LLMs as stepping stones. That is to say they should take the results and do research that will either confirm or deny it. But, of course, many people are lazy and nobody has the expertise to analyze the output of an LLM outside of their personal experience/training.
That actually supports the use-case of collaboration, since the weaknesses of both humans and LLMs would potentially cancel each other out.
Unless the judge has you examined and found to be incompetent, they're most likely to just tell you that you're an idiot and throw out the case.
The reality is that professional licensing in the US often works to shield its communities from responsibility, though it's primary function is just preventing competition.
Not tomorrow, but I just can't imagine this not happening in the next 20 years.
That is a big assumption and my doubts aren't based on any soul "magic" but on our historical inability to replicate all kinds of natural mechanisms. Instead we create analogs that work differently. We can't make machines that fly like birds but we can make airplanes that fly faster and carry more. Some of this is due to the limits of artificial construction and some of it is due to the differences in our needs driving the design choices.
Meat isn't magic, but it also isn't silicon.
It's possible that our "meat" architecture depends on a low internal latency, low external latency, quantum effects and/or some other biological quirks that simply can't be replicated directly on silicon based chip architectures.
It's also possible they are chaotic systems that can't be replicated and each artificial human brain would require equivalent levels of experience and training in ways that don't make the any more cheaper or available than humans.
It's also possible we have found some sort of local maximum in cognition and even if we can make an artificial human brain, we can't make it any smarter than we are.
There are some good reasons to think it is plausibly possible, but we are simply too far away from doing it to know for sure whether it can be done. It definitely is not a "forgone conclusion".
Not only can we, they're mere toys : https://youtu.be/gcTyJdPkDL4?t=73
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I don't know how you can believe in science and engineering, and not believe all of these:
1. Anything that already exists, the universe is able to construct, (ie. the universe fundamentally accommodates the existence of intelligent objects)
2. There is no "magic". Anything that happens ultimately follows the rules of nature, which are observable, and open to understanding and manipulation by humans.
3. While some things are astronomically (literally) difficult to achieve, that doesn't nullify #2
4. Ergo, while it might be difficult, there is fundamentally no reason to believe that the creation of an intelligent object is outside the capabilities of humans. The universe has already shown us their creation is possible.
This is different than, for instance, speculating that science will definitely allow us to live forever. There is no existence proof for such a thing.
But there is no reason to believe that we can't manipulate and harness intelligence. Maybe it won't be with Von Neumann, maybe it won't be with silicon, maybe it won't be any smarter than we are, maybe it will require just as much training as us; but with enough time, it's definitely within our reach. It's literally just science and engineering.
I didn't claim it is possible we couldn't build meat brains. I claimed it is possible that equivalent or better performance might only be obtainable by meats brains.
> 2. There is no "magic". Anything that happens ultimately follows the rules of nature, which are observable, and open to understanding and manipulation by humans.
I actually don't believe the last part. There are quite plausibly laws of nature that we can't understand. I think it's actually pretty presumptuous that we will/can eventually understand and master every law of nature.
We've already proven that we can't prove every true thing about natural numbers. I think there might well be limits on what is knowable about our universe (atleast from inside of it.)
> 4. Ergo, while it might be difficult, there is fundamentally no reason to believe that the creation of an intelligent object is outside the capabilities of humans.
I didn't say that I believed that humans can't create intelligent objects. I believe we probably can and depending on how you want to define "intelligence", we already have.
What I said is that it is not a forgone conclusion that we will create "a better therapist, doctor, architect". I think it is pretty likely but not certain.
- That AI as it currently exists is on the right track to creating that replica. Maybe neural networks will plateau before we get close. Maybe the Von Neumann architecture is the limiting factor, and we can only create the replica with a radically different model of computing!
- That we will have enough time. Maybe we'll accomplish it by the end of the decade. Maybe climate change or nuclear war will turn the world into a Mad Max–esque wasteland before we get the chance. Maybe it'll happen in a million years, when humans have evolved into other species. We just don't know!
> Maybe climate change or nuclear war will turn the world into a Mad Max–esque wasteland before we get the chance
In that eventuality, it really doesn't matter. The point remains, given enough time, we'll be successful. If we aren't successful, that means everything else has gone to shit anyway. Failure wont be because it is fundamentally impossible, it will be because we ran out of time to continue the effort.
And to be clear, I'm not even objecting to OP's claim! All I'm asking for is an affirmative reason to believe what they see as a foregone conclusion.
Every automation I have seen needs human tuning in order to keep working. The more complicated, the more tuning. This is why self driving cars and voice to text still rely on a human to monitor, and tune.
Meat is magic. And can never be completely recreated artificially.
What's hilarious about this argument (besides the fact that it smacks of the map-territory relation fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation) is that for most of my life (53 years), we've been trying not just to simulate a nematode or Drosophila (two of the most-studied creatures of all time- note that we COMPLETELY understand their nervous systems) and failed to create anything remotely convincing of "life" (note that WE are the SOLE judgers of what is "alive", there is no 100% foolproof mechanistic algorithm to detect "life" (look up the cryptobiosis of tardigrades or wood frogs for an extra challenge)... therein lies part of the problem), but we cannot even convincingly simulate a single cell's behavior in any generous span of time (so for example, using a month to compute 10 seconds of a cell's "life"). And yes, there have been projects attempting to do those things this entire time. You should look them up. Tons of promise, zero delivery.
> Given enough time, we'll create that replica, there's no reason to think otherwise.
Note how structurally similar this is to a "God of the gaps" argument (just substitute "materialism-given-unlimited-time" for "God").
And yet... I agree that we should continue to try. I just think we will discover something interesting in... never succeeding, ever... while you will continue to refer to the "materialism-given-unlimited-time of the gaps" argument, assuming (key word there) that it must be successful. Because there can't possibly be anything else going on. LOL. Naive.
(Side note, but related: I couldn't help noticing that most of the AI doomers are materialist atheists.)
I’m cynical enough to recognize the price will just go up even if the service overhead is pennies on the dollar.
- the best laptop/phone/tv in the world doesn’t offer mich more than the most affordable
- you can get for free a pen novadays that is almost as good at writing as the most expensive pens in the world (before BIC, in 1920s, pens were a luxury good reserved for wall street)
- toilets, washing mashines, heating systems and beds in the poorest homes are not very far off from the expensive homes (in EU at least)
- flying/travel is similar
- computer games and entertainment, and software in general
The more we remove human work from the loop, the more democratised and scalable the technology becomes.
At a surface level, the LLM was far more accessible. I didn't have to schedule an appointment weeks in advance. Even with the free tier, I didn't have to worry about time limits per se. There were limits, to be sure, but I could easily think about a question or the LLM's response before responding. In my case, what mattered was turnaround time on my terms rather than an in depth discussion. There was also less concern about being judged, both by another human and in a way that could get back to my employer because, yeah, it was employment related stress and the only way I could afford human service was through insurance offered by my employer. While there are significant privacy concerns with LLM's as they stand today, you don't have that direct relationship between who is offering it and the people in your life.
On a deeper level, I simply felt the advice was presented in a more useful form. The human discussions were framed by exercises to be completed between sessions. While the exercises were useful, the feedback was far from immediate and the purpose of the exercises is best described as a delaying tactic: it provided a framework for deeper thought between discussions because discussions were confined to times that were available to both parties. LLMs are more flexible. They are always available. Rather than dealing with big exercises to delay the conversation by a couple of weeks, they can be bite sized exercises to enable the next step. On top of that, LLMs allow for an expanded scope of discussion. Remember, I'm talking about workplace stress in my particular case. An LLM doesn't care whether you are talking about how you personally handle stress, or about how you manage a workplace in order to reduce stress for yourself and others.
Now I'm not going to pretend that this sort of arrangement is useful in all cases. I certainly wouldn't trust it for a psychological or medical diagnosis, and I would trust it even less for prescribed medications. On the other hand, people who cannot afford access to traditional professional services are likely better served by LLMs. After all, there are plenty of people who will offer advice. Those people range from well meaning friends who may lack the scope to offer valid advice, to snake-oil salesmen who could care less about outcomes as long as it contributes to their bottom line. Now I'm not going to pretend that LLMs care about me. On the other hand, they don't care about squeezing me for everything I have either. While the former will never change, I'll admit that the latter may. But I don't foresee that in the immediate future since I suspect the vendors of these models won't push for it until they have established their role in the market place.
There is an amount of time spent gazing into your navel which is helpful. Less or more than that can be harmful.
You can absolutely make yourself mentally ill just by spending too much time worrying about how mentally ill you are.
And it's clear that there are a rather large number of people making themselves mentally ill using OpenAI's products right now.
Oh, and, aside, nothing stops OpenAI from giving or selling your chat transcripts to your employer. :P In fact, if your employer sues them they'll very likely be obligated to hand them over and you may have no standing to resist it.
Probably they'll the change the law.
Hundreds of laws change every day.
In general, that would be a problem for the law to deal with if it ever happens; we shouldn't anticipate speculative future magic when legislating today.
It's a simulated validating listening, and context-lacking suggestions. There is no more therapy being provided by an LLM than there is healing performed by a robot arm that slaps a bandage on your arm if you were to put it in the right spot and push a button to make it pivot toward you, find your arm, and spread it lightly.
Who lobbied for this law anyway?