Given that the masses are now turning to AI for therapy - because, unfortunately or fortunately, it offers better conversations and resonance than most humans - this shift is likely to catalyse two divergent yet interconnected outcomes - rapid delusion or deep, crisis-level awakenings.
Such a compassionate commentary on this - 'isolated intelligent individuals', wow that is both just simultaneously flattering and liberating enough to reach those that need to hear it... I love the Anima-but-without-the-chaos insight. This has helped me verbalize my intuition about AI therapy or 'connection' more deeply. Will read this article a few times to really let it sink in.
It's like you're reading my AI chats! As a ahem "isolated intelligent individual", this does ring true. I have a few friends that are interested in the same things as me, but of course they're not available every moment of the day. Also it's amazing how I can sprinkle in phrases from another language, the language of my parents, transliterated into English, and the AI knows the meaning and psychic resonance of what I'm saying. But if you're an isolated individual, and want to be less isolated, then I think you can point the AI in that direction in the system prompt and it can nudge you. Whether it works long term we'll see, but hell, normally I'd not even leave this comment.
Loving the writing! Not sure why it is you hold interpersonal therapy in high regard? Or did I get the wrong impression?
I suppose the question could be: what do we hope to get out of this relation with AI? A more solid sense of individual self? Or a dissolving of that supposedly separate self into the All?
"Our evolution was never towards perfect harmony, but towards the capacity to hold contradiction."
Yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
I love this
Such a compassionate commentary on this - 'isolated intelligent individuals', wow that is both just simultaneously flattering and liberating enough to reach those that need to hear it... I love the Anima-but-without-the-chaos insight. This has helped me verbalize my intuition about AI therapy or 'connection' more deeply. Will read this article a few times to really let it sink in.
Profound insights.
Well said. I had similar thoughts about AI “therapy”
AI can only provide a mirror that is as sophisticated as the current self, not the future one.
I love this insight, it has deep implications.
It's like you're reading my AI chats! As a ahem "isolated intelligent individual", this does ring true. I have a few friends that are interested in the same things as me, but of course they're not available every moment of the day. Also it's amazing how I can sprinkle in phrases from another language, the language of my parents, transliterated into English, and the AI knows the meaning and psychic resonance of what I'm saying. But if you're an isolated individual, and want to be less isolated, then I think you can point the AI in that direction in the system prompt and it can nudge you. Whether it works long term we'll see, but hell, normally I'd not even leave this comment.
Loving the writing! Not sure why it is you hold interpersonal therapy in high regard? Or did I get the wrong impression?
I suppose the question could be: what do we hope to get out of this relation with AI? A more solid sense of individual self? Or a dissolving of that supposedly separate self into the All?
"Our evolution was never towards perfect harmony, but towards the capacity to hold contradiction."
Yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”