On A.I.
It may seem strange to find this page amongst the others on this site, but I think it's time to start having this discussion in the context of mental health.
I won't spend a lot of time discussing the technical underpinnings of what LLMs do or how they work, but until the rise of something more powerful like AGI, LLMs are the core of all A.I. technology currently reshaping our world.
Just so we are clear, LLMs basically do the following:
They study language patterns, and build mathematical models that allow them to mimic human communication with extreme precision.
That is it. That's the whole story. They are mimicry engines. There is no actual "intelligence" in our Artificial Intelligence, there is only mimicry and patterned language simulation that can look and feel very smart. Different types of generative models are used for image generation and video processing, but the same rules apply. These models build large scale internal mathematical models on how images should look, or how video should look, and all of it is based on whatever training data was made available to them.
I offer the idea that knowledge is about our ability to produce answers, but intelligence is measured by our ability to ask the important questions.
As such, A.I. is very knowledgeable, but it is not actually intelligent.
So where does mental health come into this discussion?
A few places.
We are seeing a rapid sea change in how young students are engaging with school work. These young people have mistaken mimicry for intelligence, and they are somewhat understandably eager to offload as much of the mental work of schooling to A.I. as they can. This is resulting in a drastic drop in not only reading and writing proficiency, but also a drastic drop in critical thinking abilities. The entire point of school is not to teach you facts, or history, or even scientific specifics such as the speed of light…but to teach you how to think.
That is the first place where A.I. is playing a destructive role in our lives:
We are not just offloading busy work, we are offloading the entire cognitive process. I am genuinely concerned for people who don't understand the cost of this convenience, but especially young people.
The second expression of the danger of A.I. on our mental health, is that many people are turning away from human connection and seeking actual relationships with A.I. instead. This comes in the form of so called "A.I. therapy" services, as well as the rise of "A.I. partner" services where you can configure every aspect of a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend to your specific desires.
The real danger here is not that you will get materially terrible advice from A.I. (which sometimes happens), or that it may make up data which has never existed (which happens frequently), it is this:
Turning away from human connection to seek mental health improvement is like lighting yourself on fire to stay warm.
We are social animals. We need our connections. We need to look each other in the eyes and experience nervous system co-regulation. We need to touch each other, even if it's just a pat on the back or a hug. Our brains experience social exclusion and shame via the same processing centers that handle physical pain. We are wired to need each other, and we must never let ourselves trade the difficult but beautiful work of connection for the comfort of convenience.
Writer, artist and overall amazing human, Jo Atkins-Potts has distilled this danger into one of the most beautiful and enlightening poems I have ever read, and so with her permission I will reproduce it here, both in text and via a reading by the talented voice artist Chris Tester.
I could never craft a more eloquent appeal to you on this matter, so I am honored to stand on the shoulders of giants and allow this poem to hopefully get the point across:
Please Use AI
Please use AI
when your mother dies.
Ask it what grief feels like.
Let it explain bereavement
in twelve clear bullet points.
Do not spend years
finding her
in the supermarket
by the tomatoes she always bought,
in the smell of rain on warm pavement,
discovering new ways
to miss her.
Please use AI
the next time you fall in love.
Ask it how to know
whether someone is the one.
It will give you a faster answer
than watching a person become familiar,
learning how they take their tea,
which floorboards will wake them,
how their silence sounds
when something is wrong.
And please use AI
for your wedding vows,
your eulogies,
your apologies.
Why struggle
for the right words
when a machine can give you
beautiful ones?
Words untouched by shaking hands.
Words that have never sat beside
a hospital bed.
Words that have never known
the terrible privilege
of having something to lose.
Meanwhile
I will be over here
watching someone I love
fall asleep on the sofa,
the television talking to itself,
rain tapping the windows,
the dog twitching in her dreams,
wasting my life
on these small unremarkable moments
that become,
without asking permission,
the whole thing.
A reading of "Please Use AI" by Chris Tester:
More from Jo Atkins-Potts:
"Please Use AI" is used above in full with the explicit written consent of the author.