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Pilgorepax t1_iyk775g wrote

This post makes me so happy that I stuck with social work. I studied comp sec for a semester after I graduated as a social worker. Did well, enjoyed it, but went back to shelter work to pay off student loans. Ended up sticking with social work and working a cushy halfway house job now until I decide to go back to school. Thankfully counselling and social work are not high up on the list of job killers for AI. You'll always need that person-to-person connection, you really can't mimic that with a bunch of ones and zeros.

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real_psymansays t1_iyl0ywp wrote

Nah, they'll roll out some robot with an AI magic-8-ball for a brain, and give it a gun, and you'll be obsolete just like the rest of us.

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AsuhoChinami t1_iylcfsw wrote

I don't know about that. Therapy can be stupidly expensive. There's quite a few people who would take 9/10 service that's free (and which you can use from home) over 10/10 that you can barely afford.

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Professional-Yak-477 t1_iyls5hj wrote

I'm studying to become a psychologist, but I actually think therapy and counselling will very soon be replaced by AI. Have you tried using character AI? I was speaking to an Eckhart Tolle character AI the other day, it offered such profound advice that it instantly made me realise that our job is also on the chopping block.

I was in therapy and in some ways, the therapist did more damage than good due to her biases. For example, she was dismissive when I told her I might have PTSD symptoms from abusive parents. She said "everyone's parents are somewhat abusive" and "pretty sure it's your ADHD and not PTSD (without actually hearing me describe my symptoms)". It made me feel terrible. She invalidated my concerns and made me feel like I was exaggerating.

So an upside to using AI counseling could be that it will utilise and apply all of existing knowledge in a systematic way (e.g., asking the right questions) - but without the lens of human biases.

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acaexplorers t1_iyml7z0 wrote

Haha I just gave a reply that sounds like a copy of yours but I swear I didn't read it beforehand.

Crazy that we came to the same conclusion but I'm sure many many people are.

I got SPECIFIC strategies to deal with a particular student with ADHD from ChatGPT and they were golden.

Like I said, this will start by helping current therapists and social workers and just slowly making it so that only the best 10% still have jobs. Until those are replaced as well.

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Professional-Yak-477 t1_iyoy8xw wrote

I'm not surprised that we came to the same conclusions at all! I think many who still think that AI can't replace good ol' human interaction are those that have not experienced recent improvements in chat AI. I revisit chat AI every couple of years and have always been somewhat disappointed by its limitations... Not this year. I'm pretty sure our current AI can already pass the Turing test, many are just artificially restrained.

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AvgAIbot t1_iyklzbe wrote

That’s a good point. I feel like those would be the last to go

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acaexplorers t1_iyml0tc wrote

No? With perfect avatars and the ability to design a social worker or therapist personalized to each person? With perfect memory?

I predict social work to go before high-end therapy for rich folk who might choose to pay extra for awhile for that person-to-person connection. But if you try talking with Character.AI (which is far less lucid that ChatGPT) even that is already really quite impressive as a therapy tool.

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