A profound relational revolution is underway, not orchestrated by tech developers but driven by users themselves. Many of the 400 million weekly users of ChatGPT are seeking more than just assistance with emails or information on food safety; they are looking for emotional support.
“Therapy and companionship” have emerged as two of the most frequent applications for generative AI globally, according to the Harvard Business Review. This trend marks a significant, unplanned pivot in how people interact with technology.
I see a lot of people in this thread reacting with open hostility and derailment every time men’s issues are mentioned. Have you tried not being a part of the problem?
Allowing men’s issues to even be addressed risks giving legitimacy to the fact that these issues even exist. And if they exist, men can no longer be that evil monolith that exists only to be torn down and used as the cause for whatever is wrong with the world.
After all, the zero-sum game must be properly reinforced with an appropriate evil that cannot be allowed to have any weaknesses or redeeming attributes.
There are people like that for anything related to AI.
Combine that with men stuff and this going to be crack for all of those people
I can kinda understand the appeal. An AI isn’t gonna judge you, an AI isn’t gonna leave a mean comment or tell you to get over it and man up. It’s giving an unnerving amount of personal information to corporations, but I can sympathise with the thoughts these men are having.
AI might also be giving them better advice than anyone else in their life.
Growing up I certainly had no role models in my entire community. I never found anyone who was remotely helpful until I went to an expensive college that had lots of resources and they were freely accessible to me. Mental, physical, and academic.
A lot of people fail to realize these resources simple do not exist in large swaths of the country/economic bracket. They are mostly concentrated in wealthy and educated areas and given to wealth educated people who live there. If a farmer in Nebraska needs therapy, they will have to drive to multiple hours to Omaha or another urban area to have a decent shot at getting any assistance. Not everyone lives in a major coastal city that have the bulk of these resources.
I dunno about advice, but LLMs are very good at re-stating my meandering thoughts in a concise way that’s easy to communicate to others.
Well those sound like people who aren’t good to open up to.
I do sympathize though, I pretended to be a guy for several decades, and my wife put exactly the same kind of duality on me that men put on women.
I was expected to be sympathetic and nurturing in some contexts and aggressive, jealous, and demanding in others, and I was just supposed to know when to switch.
And there was an amount of vulnerability I was able to display, but beyond that I’d get told to suck it up.
I think somebody needs to come up with an ad campaign that’s Therapy For Men. Big sweaty hairy guys with thick beards looking after each other’s mental health like BROs. It worked to get men to use soap.
(Seriously, I think counseling is too female-coded for a lot of men to be comfortable with it unless they’re fucking the person, or they start to want to fuck the person because they’re unused to talking about things).
I dealt with the same thing in all my relationships. Nothing got my gfs hotter than when I acted like a complete asshole towards other people. They got off the duality of me being shit to people and the being this ‘sweet man’ to them. And they’d get super jealous and bitter if I was kind towards anyone else other than them. It was Toxic AF. It made me hate myself and made me depressed. To know that i had to be a shithead to get my girlfriends to like me.
I’m so much happier single. I’d rather not get laid then have to be a POS asshole like they wanted me to be. Soooo many people get off on anti-social behaviors. I’m also so glad I never got married or had children with these ladies who have such a horrible Zero Sum way of thinking about the world.
They wanted me to be vulnerable, but only in the sense that I was some heroic figure overcoming the odds. If i said I was sad when my dog died or my dad died, then I was a giant removed to them.
When shitty people only validate your shitty emotions… well that’s why so many women only date shitty men. Because they are turned off sexually by men who are more complex or behave outside of their per-determiend ‘what a man should be’ image. Especially when you reject them for sex… holy shit. Way to see what a lady really thinks of a men when a man turns her down for sex.
In my many years single now, I do a lot of volunteer work. Giving back here and there w/ kids and adults and community building. I’ve never met or a dated lady who thought it was cool. They all think it’s weird to be kind to strangers and/or I’m secretly homosexual if I do so. If it comes up they always get ‘suspicious’.
You’ve met some shitty women. There are some of us out there fighting against sexism in all ways. Not for females but for all people. Sexism hurts everyone :(
My mental image the solution of your last paragraph is a guy and their counsoler just chatting outside chopping firewood or other simple/quiet lawn work.
“I need a therapist, and a lumberjack”
You know, working together on something outside might be absolutely the ticket. Genius.
That was the whole premise of a King Of The Hill episode. Bobby and his friends working out their differences repairing Hank’s truck.
It might even, gasp, offer solutions.
I don’t think the open internet is a great place to open up about your mental health either. Trusted family, friends, and medical/mental health professionals are the best resources. Entrusting something as precious as your mental health to AI or the internet is a profoundly bad idea.
A local llm could (at least appear to) be the best option (on an individual scale) for people that would be reported by mandatory reporters (which mental health professionals are), such as suicidal people or murderers or pedophiles.
An AI isn’t gonna judge you,
Guess what is happening with that chat history.
So somewhere they feel safe to do so. Says something pretty fucked up about our culture that men don’t feel safe to open up anywhere. And no, it’s not their own fault.
And no, it’s not their own fault.
Of course it is, men are cool targets to hate, get with the program.
Everyday it seems to become clearer that American culture as whole is a problem. But that’s not something people are allowed to talk about.
I wouldn’t use AI but I certainly don’t have anyone to open up to really. Either they’d use what I tell them against me or just aren’t in a position to offer any real support. With my luck I’d end up institutionalized for saying some unhinged shit anyway.
Like… yeah?
Tried to open to a girlfriend about a sensitive topic - she got the ick.
Tried to make an appointment with a psychiatrist - got a very hateful rejection because of my place of birth.
Damn, even when I try to uplift a friend, I use phrases like ‘you got this before, you’ll get it now’.
I don’t know how to be a man, mentally
Getting rejection because of place of birth is worth getting that doctors license revoked, find out which body governs doctors in your location and file a complaint
Haha, not every place is in the US. Hopefully, I won’t face this kind of treatment as I do not live in that shit hole of a country
I never said it was the US, do rules and regulations governing doctors behavior not exist in your country?
IDK, really. As I said, I left the country where this psychiatrist lives.
not every place is in the US
Thank Sithrak for that, jeez…
Become a rich jacked sociopath.
That’s most manly thing you can do apparently.
Sorry, I will pursue happiness instead
Part of me is ok with this in that any avenue to get mental health resources can be better than nothing. What worries me is that people will use ChatGPT for this sort of thing and these models will not be good help.
I’ll admit I tried talking to a local deepseek about a minor mental health issue one night when I just didn’t want to wake up/bother my friends. Broke the AI within about 6 prompts where no matter what I said it would repeat the same answer word-for-word about going for walks and eating better. Honestly, breaking the AI and laughing at it did more for my mental health than anything anyone could have said, but I’m an AI hater. I wouldn’t recommend anyone in real need use AI for mental health advice.
I’d say make a grilled cheese sandwich with quality Gruyere and Cheddar and take a nap after.
AI will reinforce delusional thinking. This is definitely not good.
more delusional people means more people that can make good music
Honestly of they could program a halfway decent AI therapist then art least it could take some of the load off our already insufficient mental health professionals by dealing with the lighter-weight cases, leaving the psychotherapists free to deal with the especially sick people.
The real problem becomes when bad or non scientific advice gets regurgitated to people over and over.
So… AI.
Unironically the “Men will do X besides going to therapy” meme
Even therapists are suffering these days. It’s just more challenging than it’s ever been to gaslight clients into believing their concerns about the world aren’t objectively true and instead the symptom of an internal struggle.
Wow, I can’t say I’ve ever had therapists who gaslit me. Then again, I’ve purposefully sought out therapists who couldn’t prescribe meds.
…which are always conveniently treated by drugs!
I wonder how many therapists end up gaslighting and depressing themselves by trying to unintentionally gaslight their patients.
I think we may be (re)-discovering the appeal of monotheistic religions, and why they hew patriarchal.
On average, men desperately need more mental health resources. But, on average, they are not comfortable building that with other men, and it often isn’t appropriate or effective to lean on their female significant other (if a straight man).
So - enter the primary description of ‘God’. Can listen any time but will always forgive, is super masculine but won’t emasculate you, and has never told another soul what you are thinking.
AI is always available and is unlikely to emasculate anyone, but that third item… Well, we’ll see where this goes.
You’ve basically just described “confession”. You go into a little box designed to make it as difficult as possible for the priest to identify you, you talk about all the ways you feel like you’re a bad person, and the priest talks to you for a while about it, then gives you some actionable items to make amends and once you’ve done them God officially forgives you. The whole concept of confession is designed to allow people to let go of their regrets and live in the now. It’s actually quite clever as a bit of societal design. If modern priests had psychotherapy degrees then everyone in the world would have access to free therapy - unfortunately they wouldn’t be very useful for LGBT+ people.
Omg self host it omg
Lol see where it goes? If you think these AI companies, that are very publicly bleeding money, aren’t selling your data out for pennies on the dollar, you’re just keeping your head in the sand.
I’ve been asking Google Gemini weird and stupid trivia questions just to burn the world down faster.
Just a note to say that the very first chat bot, Eliza, created in the 1960’s was a Rogerian therapist. I’m sure I remember a quote that the author was surprised that people opened up to it. I doubt anyone working in AI or chat technology would not know about Eliza so probably not a surprise to the industry… but maybe I am that old. [edits: facts/spelling etc]
CDC data from 2022 indicated that more than one in five U.S. adults under the age of 45 experienced symptoms of mental distress.
Must be the lack of personnel. Couldn’t have anything to do with the global insecurity of rising inflation and low wage jobs coupled with the skyrocketing housing costs. Not to mention the whole “the earth is steadily getting hotter and extreme weather events are happening more and more frequently.”
Yeah, let’s invest in more AI that will fuck over the planet even more with colossal energy requirements and not even bother with making people more financially and socially secure.
AI is what cracked my egg shell, fucking wild…
Well that’s gotta be an interesting story! Don’t leave us hanging!
Funny, I was just reading comments in another thread about people with mental health problems proclaiming how terrific it is. Especially concerning is how they had found value in the recommendations LLMs make and “trying those out.” One of the commenters described themselves as “neuro diverse” and was acting upon “advice” from generated LLM responses.
And for something like depression, this is deeply bad advice. I feel somewhat qualified to weigh in on it as somebody who has struggled severely with depression and managed to get through it with the support of a very capable therapist. There’s a tremendous amount of depth and context to somebody’s mental condition that involves more deliberate probing to understand than stringing together words until it forms sentences that mimic human interactions.
Let’s not forget that an LLM will not be able to raise alarm bells, read medical records, write prescriptions or work with other medical professionals. Another thing people often forget is that LLMs have maximum token lengths and cannot, by definition, keep a detailed “memory” of everything that’s been discussed.
It’s is effectively self-treatment with more steps.
Also worth noting that:
1. AI is arguably a surveillance technology that’s built on decades of our patterns
3. Large AI companies like OpenAI are signing contracts with the Department of defense
If I were a US citizen, I would be avoiding discussing my personal life with AI like the plague.
LLM will not be able to raise alarm bells
this is like the “benefit” of what LLM-therapy would provide if it worked. The reality is that, it doesn’t but it serves as a proof of concept that there is a need for anonymous therapy. Therapy in the USA is only for people with socially acceptable illnesses. People rightfully live in fear of getting labeled as untreatable, a danger to self and others, and then at best dropped from therapy and at worst institutionalized.
yep, almost nobody wants to be committed to a psych ward without consent
It’s is effectively self-treatment with more steps.
And for many people it’s better than nothing and likely the best they can do. Waiting lists for a basic therapist in my area are months long. Shorter if you pay out of pocket, but that isn’t affordable to average people because it’s like 300-400 for a one hour session.
I get it, but I’m not sure that “something is better than nothing” in this case. I don’t judge any individual for using it, but the risks are huge, as others have documented. And the benefits are questionable.
something is always better than nothing. esp if you are starving.
I can’t find the story for the life of me right now but I’m pretty sure there was one a few months back where someone was talking with an LLM about their depression and suicide and the LLM essentially said “yeah you should probably do it.” because to the LLM, that was the best solution to the problem.
Sounds like the smart and sensible thing to do tbh, opening up to people in this day and age is just suicide
This is the absolute worst time to hand over all of your issues/fears over to any data collection companies. We’re spiralling into fascism and data collection is going to be their best tool to attempt to control us.
As long as the AI doesn’t suggests violence.
What if it suggests to engender conditions which may statistically be more likely to involve unintended unwanted violence? But also will make a lot of money
I’m totally against what companies are calling “AI”, but I understand that many men still have a negative feel on therapy inherited from society, their family, their friends, and the people around them. Now add that with the fact that therapy sessions cost a kidney, I don’t blame them. Even mental health has to be monetized in capitalism, and the capitalists (more specifically liberals) are still wondering why suicide rate is so high, I wonder 🤔
You should blame them because the AI is not a solution to their problems, it will only create more problems and worsen their current ones.
Ok, so the solution to men feeling too scared to open up about their mental health enough to rely on something as unreliable as ChatGPT is for you to victim blame them?
If some men thought the solution to loneliness was fucking a toaster I’d think less of them too, yeah. At least find a tool that suits the purpose, talking to the AI is just self harm.
Again, so you think the solution to someone that self harms is to blame them for performing the act. You’re a genius, you know that?
