PaaS – Psychology as a Service
One of my friend was ranting about psychology, he had bad experiences with a few therapists. He insisted chatGPT answers all his problems way better than any professional he had visited.
Yes, “he”, I wonder if the female population feels the same. No that he represents the male “counterparts”, but certainly represents – a spectrum from – the IT crowd.
Do LLMs – spoonfed by tons of tons of psychologic content and tuned (ordered) to be polite and not to be persuadable – will eventually replace this profession as well?
Professional psychologist who’s goal is not to please the clients then collect the money, but thrive to aid – often cases save them – study a lot.
They spend at least third of their income if not more to be a better help.
What do they study? Same content which is fed to LLMs? Partially yes.. however they process it, and evolve its content fused by experience. That experience could of corse also be put onto “paper” which again can be an input for a model.
LLMs have an “advantage”: no chemistry involved. They seem to be professional, and some cases probably are more prof than a human. Designed to be captivate, even please. In human interactions, with therapeutic journey, there will be a connection which will channel “energy“. That will affect not only the conscious mind.
I personally believe, they “seemingly assist formidably” to a certain point, but the tradeoff often times is that they emphasise and support your believes, your way of thinking. Your bubble.
Human psyche however, is still way too complex, not to mention subconsciousness, where intuition, empathy, personal bound and professional experience can be invaluable and irreplaceable. Whereas LLMs do not have experience only convincing emulation. so far.