A lot of the comparisons I see revolve around comparing a perfect therapist to an LLM. This isn't the best comparison, because I've been to 4 different therapists over my life an only one of them actually helped me (2 of them spent most of the therapy telling me stories about themselves. These are licensed therapists!!) There are really bad therapists out there.
An LLM, especially chatgpt is like a friend who's on your side, who DOES encourage you and takes your perspective every time. I think this is still a step up from loneliness.
And a final point, ultimately an LLM is a statistical machine that takes the most likely response to your issues based on an insane amount of human data. Therefore it is very likely to actually make some pretty good calls about what it should respond, you might even say it takes the best (or most common) in humanity and reflects that to you. This also might be better than a therapist, who could easily just view your sitation through their own live's lense, which is suboptimal.
An LLM, especially chatgpt is like a friend who's on your side, who DOES encourage you and takes your perspective every time. I think this is still a step up from loneliness.
And a final point, ultimately an LLM is a statistical machine that takes the most likely response to your issues based on an insane amount of human data. Therefore it is very likely to actually make some pretty good calls about what it should respond, you might even say it takes the best (or most common) in humanity and reflects that to you. This also might be better than a therapist, who could easily just view your sitation through their own live's lense, which is suboptimal.