>Damn, we hardly know who our users are
No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.
No, they know who you are. 1 in 3 already use AI for mental health advice among many other things.
LLMs can barely identify gaps in their own software designs, and they are provably good at making software.
Given there have been multiple suicides driven by LLMs. I really doubt that.
The worst problem with mental health care is that there is no "you're better" metric. There is if your bone breaks and heal. There is for surgery of various things. But mental health seems to follow Parkinson's Law, and expands to the number of sessions available, whether it helps or not. And at X00$/session, yeah gets costly quick.
So if something trained on all psychiatric literature costs $20/month subscription, that's a substitute therapist. Whether it's clinically trained or not.
With that kind of benchmark comparison, it’s not all that hard for AI to present some kind of favorable value proposition, even if also inconsistent but with a harder ceiling on the upside.
People want to talk to their therapist after an argument with their husband or when their boss fires them, not Friday after next.
It absolutely does, you just believe you can decide for others what’s harmful for them.
“And the next time you feel your heart going out of rhythm, just hold your breath, and remember I will see you again a couple of weeks from now.”
Ah wait, no they don’t, because “resilience” is a worthless concept in emergencies, both mental and physical.
Therapists will likewise encourage you to build up resilience so that "a relationship ended" is not a crisis, and also build support networks of real people who can really come visit you when you need urgent support.
There are also, of course, crisis hotlines.
I'm not sure where you live. I know almost all colleges in the US have walk in free mental health counseling, along with free telesupport. My company has onsite mental health professionals who you can talk to or call at any time. There are free mental health clinics all over my city. There's mental health professionals who did daily outreach with the homeless and addicts in our city.
This doesn't even start to list all of the available apps you can download from your health care provider for free resources that are available to you.
This might have been true 30-40 years ago, but even over the last decade during and after covid, healthcare providers have put a huge emphasis on mental health and counseling to give people an abundance of resources to help them - when they need help, not in four days when someone is available.
Can't see that coming to bite you.
I've been to two universities and this was not the case from the university itself, especially outside of normal business hours. If you didn't have an emergency, you had to wait months, if you had an emergency (I was explicitly told the only way to see someone anytime soon was if I said I'd kill myself if I didn't get an appointment and then they'd see if there was someone available) you might be able to talk to someone sooner. After hours emergencies maybe the psych ward at the hospital would see you? There's free resources, but universities aren't really providing much.