News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental health therapy. Parent comment

Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by laserlight on Thursday August 14, 2025 @01:22AM (#44896991)
Please show me one doctor who recommended taking a rock each day. LLMs have a different failure mode than professionals. People are aware that doctors or therapists may err, but I've already seen countless instances of people asking relationship advice from sycophant LLMs and thinking that the advice is “unbiased”.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by shmel on Thursday August 14, 2025 @03:44AM (#44897814)
Homeopathy is a good example. For an uneducated person it sounds convincing enough and yes, there are doctors prescribing homeopathic pills. I am still fascinated it still exists.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by fl0id on Thursday August 14, 2025 @06:07AM (#44898698)
That’s actually a example of sth different. And as it’s basically a placebo it only harms people’s wallets (mostly). That cannot be said for random llm failure modes. And whether it can be prescribed by doctors depends very much on the country
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by ivell on Thursday August 14, 2025 @08:35AM (#44899655)
I don't think it is that harmless. Believe in homeopathy often delays patients from taking timely intervention.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by pmarreck on Friday August 15, 2025 @10:27AM (#44912851)
Yes. See: Steve Jobs, maybe.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by terminalshort on Thursday August 14, 2025 @06:17AM (#44898763)
A LLM (or doctor) recommending that I take a rock can't hurt me. Screwing up in more reasonable sounding ways is much more dangerous.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by zdragnar on Thursday August 14, 2025 @08:34AM (#44899642)
Actually, swallowing a rock will almost certainly cause problems. Telling your state medical board that your doctor told you to take a rock will have a wildly different outcome than telling a judge that you swallowed one because ChatGPT told you to do so.

Unless the judge has you examined and found to be incompetent, they're most likely to just tell you that you're an idiot and throw out the case.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by terminalshort on Thursday August 14, 2025 @09:32AM (#44900187)
They can't hurt me by telling me to do it because I won't.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental h... by pmarreck on Friday August 15, 2025 @10:26AM (#44912848)
> LLMs have a different failure mode than professionals

That actually supports the use-case of collaboration, since the weaknesses of both humans and LLMs would potentially cancel each other out.

[ Parent | on HN ]