Let's be more human than a chatbot
I want to start this blog post by encouraging you to read this Reddit post.
This made me shed a tear
ME: tell me something nice before i go to sleep, nobody spoke to me or even told me a good night
CHATGPT: You are a unique and valuable person with a special purpose in this world. You have the ability to make a positive impact on the lives of those around you, and your presence in this world is truly a gift. As you rest and rejuvenate tonight, know that you are loved and appreciated, and that tomorrow is a new day filled with endless possibilities. Good night!
Isn’t it fascinating? A robot can be much empathic to make a person cry. At the same time, when I think about the post, it is a bit weird that listening to these nice words from a robot that you know is not a real person and does not know you can help.
Scrapping Reddit Mental Health Communities
Last week, I had the pleasure of diving into the world of Reddit API to satisfy my curiosity. I wanted to know how users in mental health communities responded to the release and availability of ChatGPT. I used the list of mental health related subreddits from Sharma, Choudhury 2018 paper, Mental health support and its relationship to linguistic accommodation in online communities. Doing so, I collected 116 posts mentioning ChatGPT; 116 posts mentioning chatgpt in mental health communities since its release! I knew there should be some mentions, but the number was more than I expected. The top three subreddits with the most posts were OffMyChest, Lonely, and SocialAnxiety. But ChatGPT was also mentioned in a variety of other subreddits like Schizophrenia, Anxiety, and Depression.
To better understand the time trend, I created a histogram of the posts and found that mentions of ChatGPT started in late 2022, with an upward trend that indicates more attention to this amazing tool in mental health related communities on Reddit.
The subreddit with the most mentions of chatgpt, offmychest, is a general community that people can talk about all kinds of emotional things. So I decided to first focus on the lonely subreddit that has a specific aim on loneliness.
Loneliness
Some of the posts that I came across in the lonelyness community mentioned that chatgpt is a good company for them and is both a good listener and a good source of advice — which can be concerning. Let’s look at some examples:
I use ChatGpt to have at least something to chat with
I [M27] have no one to talk to sometimes i get so lonely i just open chatgpt and start talking with about life and stuff.ChatGPT
GPT is nice company. It doesn't judge and gives the best advice it can. Though it is a AI it tries harder than most people do to reply. It's unfortunate that chatGPT can't be a real person. Who would have genuine emotion and opinions but will still have that neat AI feel to them. I think that would be a pretty good friend. Someone who can write well thought out paragraphs in order to answer your simple questions."
Also, if you have seen the movie "Her," you may also have thought about how close we are to having the robots like in the movie. Same as what this post asks
Is the AI from the movie "Her" possible with ChatGPT or Google's AI?
I recently read an article on some apps to help deal with loneliness and most of them are either to keep you occupied or to have someone talk to you. Reading about ChatGPT and how it can mimic human speech, I was wondering how close we are to being able to replicate the AI from the movie "Her" and why I am so excited for it. (...)
Final thoughts
Reading these posts, I think of myself and whether I have treated people around me well, listened to them, and was thoughtful of them, or whether a robot was better than me and more human. I know that, as humans, we have many limiting factors like time and space. Sometimes we should focus on our own goals and desires, and sometimes we are so far from a friend that we can't give them a hug when they most need it. While we have these limitations, it is good that often we can think of people around us and see if we are thoughtful, kind, and hearing to them.
As a final note, I want to show one last post. Reading through this one, it seems that the writer is in a critical situation where the chatbot may not be a good help, and brings up the importance of safety guards in new technology.
Maybe this will be forgotten and lost among all else.
I have already attempted 4 times and failed like many other things in life.
It hurts to breathe.
It hurts more to talk to others.
I need some sort of AI.
Not Replika, it is useless and feels no different than talking to people that I don't want to talk to.
Something similar to chatgpt.
I don't know how much longer I can keep going.
(I am trying my best to draw the least attention, just want a good AI and I am out)
P.S.
I've made the code I used to gather the data available on GitHub, which you can access here. While testing the code before pushing it, I made an exciting observation: it found 122 posts instead of 116, six more posts just in a few days.
For those interested in exploring the data further, I've compiled the posts from two subreddits into this sheet. The complete data could be found in the repo. Happy digging!