> A well-trained LLM that lacks any malevolent data
This is self-contradictory. An LLM must have malevolent data to identify malevolent intentions. A naive LLM will be useless. Might as well get psychotherapy from a child.
Once LLM has malevolent data, it may produce malevolent output. LLM does not inherently understand what is malevolence. It basically behaves like a psychopath.
You are trying to get a psychopath-like technology to do psychotherapy.
It’s like putting gambling addicts in charge of the world financial system, oh wait…
I ask this with all sincerity, why is it important to be able to detect malevolent intentions from the person you're giving therapy to? (In this scenario, you cannot be hurt in any way.)
In particular, if they're being malevolent toward the therapy sessions I don't expect the therapy to succeed regardless of whether you detect it.
The frustrating thing about your argument is that it runs on a pretence that we must prove squares aren’t circles.
A person may be unable to provide mathematical proof and yes be obviously correct.
The totally obvious thing you are missing is that most people will not encourage obviously self-destructive behaviour because they are not psychopaths. And they can get another person to intervene if necessary
I'm not sure I get the actual point you're making.
To begin with, not all therapy involves people at risk of harming themselves. Easily over 95% of people who can benefit from therapy are at no more risk of harming themselves than the average person. Were a therapy chatbot to suggest something like it to them, the response will either be amusement or annoyance ("why am I wasting time on this?")
Arguments from extremes (outliers) are the stuff of logical fallacies.
As many keep pointing out, there are plenty of cases of licensed therapists causing harm. Most of the time it is unintentional, but for sure there are those who knowingly abused their position and took advantage of their patients. I'd love to see a study comparing the two ratios to see whether the human therapist or the LLM fare worse.
I think most commenters here need to engage with real therapists more, so they can get a reality check on the field.
I know therapists. I've been to some. I took a course from a seasoned therapist who also was a professor and had trained them. You know the whole replication crisis in psychology? Licensed therapy is no different. There's very little real science backing most of it (even the professor admitted it).
Sure, there are some great therapists out there. The norm is barely better than you or I. Again, no exaggeration.
So if the state of the art improves, and we then have a study showing some LLM therapists are better than the average licensed human one, I for one will not think it a great achievement.
Once again: The argument appears to be "LLMs cannot be therapists because they are LLMs." Circular logic.
> Generally a non-person doesn’t have skills,
A semantic argument isn't helpful. A chess grandmaster has a lot of skill. A computer doesn't (according to you). Yet, the computer can beat the grandmaster pretty much every time. Does it matter that the computer had no skill, and the grandmaster did?
That they don't have "skill" does not seem particularly notable in this context. It doesn't help answer "Is it possible to get better therapy from an LLM than from a licensed therapist?"
US has plenty of protectionism, including recent 300% tax on bombardier, and pushing Europe to implement bans or tariffs on Chinese competitors of US corporations.
EU Ebike regulations are the worst on the planet, our cities are dense and traffic is slow, but we've wasted an opportunity to replace half the cars in European cities.
First consider the 16 mph / 25 km/h speed limit - have you ever seen a road sign with such speed limit? Lowest 'normal' speed limit is 30 km/h. The result is, you are either impeding traffic, or a truck tries to overtake you, misjudges distance and kills you. The lowest speed limit and the ebike speed limit need to match.
Second, the 250W power limit is an ass pull. Imagine you are Cycling up a medium-steep hill - 15% incline. 250 watts gives you 3 miles per hour. Let's say 10 miles per hour is a minimum acceptable speed, that requires 800 watts of power. And god help you if you are overweight or carrying groceries or a child as a passenger.
And ebikes cost £2,000 and £4,000 for a cargo bike because we have imposed 60% tax on importing bicycle parts from China.
Just get a speed pedelec (45km/h, no limit on power but stay on the road) if you want to go 20km/h faster than other cyclists. Going that fast on a bike line is super dangerous
The greatest lie in the world is that US Gov. wants free market.
It has spent the last 10 years lobbying EU to ban Huawei, Chinese electric cars, Tiktok, etc.. It has banned foreign ships from travelling between US ports, a deal by Japan's Nippon Steel, imposed 300% tax on Bombardier, and imprisoned French executives until they agreed to sell a division of Alstom to GE.
This is why I support Trump as a European - at least he is upfront about the racket he is running. If the pretence cannot be maintained, our politicians will be forced to respond.
There are plenty of shady people commenting right here right now.