AI therapy slop [Ad-free] [Extended]
Added 2025-05-14 07:00:07 +0000 UTCDr. ChatGPT will see you now.
Ryan wrote about using ChatGPT for therapy, and a lot of responses to that announcement involved calling him an idiot. This week, he sits down with Grant to talk about what he learned over experimenting with AI therapy for a few months, and a broader chat about the birth of the AI world — and how it’s pretty much involved in everything already (in good and bad, and mostly bad, ways). Dr. ChatGPT will see you now.
Credits
- Host: Ryan Broderick
- Producer: Grant Irving
- Engineer: Rebecca Seidel
- Researcher: Adam Bumas
- Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad
Comments
TLDR. ITS A USEFUL TOOL, can’t blame you for using it. Happy it helped. I think people are just bummed about a bunch of things right now and we’re all experiencing this shit collectively and blindly at the same time, and we’re expecting this WHILE LLM products are being released. It doesn’t have the same feel as an new iPod launch back in 2006. —- my long winded thoughts—- For llm tools, there’s this huge barrier in culture which is messy at constructively highlighting the legitimate concerns the public have. We worry about our continued employment, about our education (which people are paying or have paid a lot of money for), while being overshadowed by LLM companies strong-arming themselves into everything, and lobbying for unfettered access to our personal data, private copywritten works, or personal creative content. It feels like we’re being shived for wanting a steady pace on technology that doesn’t steal our work and creative endeavours. But I see its usefulness for general things too. a lot of people are using it because it may be the only way they can navigate and research topics they’re interested in, accessing education could be harder or financially out of reach, and social and health services (such as a therapist) may be unaffordable or have significant waitlists. Like for Ryan. It helps. I’m in Australia, and wenationally have impacts accessing mental health services (be it financially or timely). This tool could help alleviate this inaccessibility problem, if the product is passing enough safety-tests, while knowing it’s not the exact same as a registered provider either. LLM can also be helpful for learning from home in regional towns too. It could help single-person business owners be more independent. It can help pick up slack when your brain is exhausted after a long day of work and you still have a boat load of emails to send on behalf of yourself. It’s roided clippy. I feel, and I can can see my generation (gen y) feeling this too, like the introduction of ChatGPT is just a tool to overcharge methed-out capitalism and to kick us out of work. its just another thing on the list of things we feel shit about in 2025. we may as well perish since we’re not productive enough, while we hold up our degrees or experience and say “but I learnt this skill and I’m great at doing it! the social contract was that I get paid for having learnt these skills society said it needed”. But that’s naive, isn’t it? We feel like we’re being portrayed as wasteful meatsacks, we’re slow, our skills are irrelevant, and we should stop being ungrateful if we’re laid off while training the tool that replaces us. It’s productivity at all costs, efficiency or lose it all, steamroll copywriten protections, prepare for massive company downsizing. It’s a “get on board or fuck off” attitude directed at the literal middle generation of this day n age. It’s happening while we’re being told we will work till we’re 90, we can’t afford homes, and we should feel bad for selfishly not having enough babies. and also fuck us for being apparently “lefty” because we don’t like the idea of the world continuing to burn up. Boomers and Gen x: “Oh, if you expected you should be entitled to work and a fair paying job after putting in the hard work; well then you’re a dumbass. have fun with that $30k+ student debt. That job has been pushed to the LLM now” I bet we’d hear people fuckin whinge if our generation just said “let the boomers die off, ignore anyone born before 1978, and just let gen z clean up the mess we missed when fixing this along the way because both generations have been told for decades we already suck.” And why would we do such actions like that? Becuase it’s probably what the LLM would suggest is the most efficient way of fuckin doing anything now. It doesn’t give a shit. It’s just a frigging program. And it’s run by a bunch of greedy motherufckers who don’t give two shits about us anyway. Use it. Don’t use it. It doesn’t matter. Get a hobby for happiness. Meet new people away from the phone. touch some grass. Piss into the wind. Shit in the woods. Love the show. Cam
Cam
2025-08-19 06:24:37 +0000 UTCHonest question: What Ryan says at the very end, that advice he got from ChatGPT about using Dating Apps again: That for sure SOUNDS incredibly smart and deep and insightful or whatever, but...is it really? I've been thinking about it for an hour now, and I have not come to an answer. Like, what is wrong with relief? And is a search for relief always compulsory? And how does that fit in with the very real analysis that this is exactly what LLMs are good at (very much by design): To make you THINK they are much smarter and more "conscious " than they actually are?
Abucs
2025-05-15 18:03:54 +0000 UTCwhat I don’t understand is: you keep tut-tutting about how “the problems with AI are here and we need to deal with them right now it doesn’t matter if you think it’s dumb or wrong or whatever”. if people in power of institutions insist on replacing their workers with AI because they beleive it’s more efficient/cost-effective even if it isn’t … the fuck am I supposed to do?? If people are outsourcing their friendship to the schizophrenia inducing robot… what am I supposed to do about it? Who exactly is Ryan scolding??
Smile
2025-05-14 13:11:05 +0000 UTC
