ChatGPT is Not Your Therapist
Recently, while on Instagram, I came across an alarming post. It was a video of a mother who had forgotten her child’s name when a stranger had asked her. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has happened before, but instead of taking a moment to remember the name, process the embarrassment, and move on, she enlisted the help of ChatGPT. She asked the AI chatbot why she may have forgotten her child’s name to which it generated an emotional supportive response validating her feelings.
A few scrolls later and I was met with a video documenting ChatGPT being used like a therapist, where the user described her situation to the chatbot and kind words were spat back.
Situations and sentiments like these have become increasingly common. Although the reels are good for a quick laugh, it highlights an alarming issue: AI is making people emotionally unintelligent. Not only does using ChatGPT require a huge amount of energy and processing power, but it disconnects us with many aspects of humanity. Namely, human connection and emotional processing. In both of these situations, the artificial intelligence did a stellar job at validating these individual’s feelings, yet people in the comments were quick to share their gripes with it.
Many pointed out that when you seek out non-human entities for human problems, there is no possibility of empathy or perspective. There is no context to the conversations and the relationship of user to chatbot is consumer/user to product. Meaning, AI is incapable of actually caring about its user’s problems. There can be no genuine connection with a robot because it has no capacity for emotional processing, lacking human empathy and understanding.
Not to mention, divulging your secrets to an artificial intelligence which is owned by a huge conglomerate might not be the best idea. ChatGPT can store your data and use it to train its artificial intelligence, meaning it keeps records of your deeply personal conversations. The usage of ChatGPT for emotional processing has melted the brains of many internet users. Combine that with nobody being able to write, critically think, or function without the chatbot, our future as a species is looking pretty gloomy.