1. Social media -> connection 2. AGI -> erotica 3. Suicide -> prevention
All these for engagement (i.e. addiction). It seems like the tech industry is the root cause itself trying to masquerade the problem by brainwashing the population.
* LLM would of course be technically more correct, but that term doesn't appeal to people seeking some level of intelligent interaction.
Sure! let's take a look at OpenAI's executive staff to see how equipped they are to take a morally different approach than Meta.
Fidji Simo - CEO of Applications (formerly Head of Facebook at Meta)
Vijaye Raji - CTO of Applications (formerly VP of Entertainment at Meta)
Srinivas Narayanan - CTO of B2B Applications (formerly VP of Engineering at Meta)
Kate Rouch - Chief Marketing Officer (formerly VP of Brand and Product Marketing at Meta)
Irina Kofman - Head of Strategic Initiatives (formerly Senior Director of Product Management for Generative AI at Meta)
Becky Waite - Head of Strategy/Operations (formerly Strategic Response at Meta)
David Sasaki - VP of Analytics and Insights (formerly VP of Data Science for Advertising at Meta)
Ashley Alexander - VP of Health Products (formerly Co-Head of Instagram Product at Meta)
Ryan Beiermeister - Director of Product Policy (formerly Director of Product, Social Impact at Meta)
When given the right prompts, LLMs can be very effective at therapy. Certainly my wife gets a lot of mileage out of having ChatGPT help her reframe things in a better way. However "the right prompts" are not the ones that most mentally ill people would choose for themselves. And it is very easy for ChatGPT to become part of a person's delusion spiral, rather then be a helpful part of trying to solve it.
I know that many teens turn to social media. My strong opinions against that show up in other comments...
I see that explanation for the increased suicide risk caused by antidepressants a lot, but what’s the evidence for it?
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a study, just a reason why people believe it.
There is also a strong parallel to manic depression. Manic depressives have a high suicide risk, and it usually happens when they are coming out of depression. With akathisia (fancy way to say inner restlessness) being the leading indicator. The same pattern is seen with antidepressants. The patient gets treatment, develops akathisia, then attempts suicide.
But, as with many things to do with mental health, we don't really know what is going on inside of people. While also knowing that their self-reports are, shall we say, creatively misleading. So it is easy to have beliefs about what is going on. And rather harder to verify them.
My claim that LLMS can do effective therapeutic things is a positive claim. My report of my wife's experience is evidence. My example of something it has done for her is something that other people, who have experienced LLMs, can sanity check and decide whether they think this is possible.
You responded by saying that it is categorically impossible for this to be true. Statements of impossibility are *ALSO* positive claims. You have provided no evidence for your claim. You have failed to meet the burden of proof for your position. (You have also failed to clarify exactly what you consider impossible - I suspect that you are responding to something other than what I actually said.)
This is doubly true given the documented effectiveness of tools like https://www.rosebud.app/. Does it have very significant limitations? Yes. But does it deliver an experience that helps a lot of people's mental health? Also, yes. In fact that app is recommended by many therapists as a complement to therapy.
But is it a replacement for therapy? Absolutely not! As they themselves point out in https://www.rosebud.app/care, LLMs consistently miss important things that a human therapist should be expected to catch. With the right prompts, LLMs are good at helping people learn and internalize positive mental health skills. But that kind of use case only covers some of the things that therapists do for you.
So LLMs can and do to effective therapeutic things when prompted correctly. But they are not a replacement for therapy. And, of course, an unprompted LLM is unlikely to on its own do the potentially helpful things that it could.
Second, you misrepresent. The therapists that I have heard recommend Rosebud were not paid to do so. They were doing so because they had seen it be helpful.
Furthermore you have still not clarified what it is you think is impossible, or provided evidence that it is impossible. Claims of impossibility are positive assertions, and require evidence.
But social media is a far bigger concern than AI.
Unless, of course, you count the AI algorithms that TikTok uses to drive engagement, which in turn can cause social contagion...
I have noticed that TikTok can detect a depressive episode within ~a day of it starting (for me), as it always starts sending me way more self harm related content
It had been showing me depressive content for days / weeks beforehand, during the start of the episode, however the sh content only started (Or I only noticed it) a few hours after I had a relapse, so the timing was rather uncanny
Also, please keep in mind "supportive, every day". It's talking through stuff that I already know about, not seeking some new insights and revelations. Just shooting the shit with an entity which is booted with well defined ideas from you, your real human therapist and can give you very predictable, just common sense reactions that can still help when it's 2am and you have nobody to talk to, and all of your friends have already heard this exact talk about these exact problems 10 times already.