lot of mental health issues. I use LLMs for technical things, but these people using them for therapists, I'm not sure that's healthy.

They're probably completely serious. We've seen multiple stories about people getting into deep relationships with AIs and being driven to delusion and insanity by them.

Human connection can be difficult and dangerous, and a lot of people are deeply antisocial or fearful of interaction. Many peoples' primary means of communication was already through the abstraction of the internet before AI came along and a whole generation lost years of potential social development time to lockdowns.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that people connect with AI more deeply than they do to real people. AI is almost perfectly designed to encourage parasocial relationships.

Keep in mind that a lot of Reddit accounts are bots and/or foreign troll-farms or scammers who rage-bait and karma-farm for unsavory purposes. But there are also lots of folks with genuine mental issues too.

Still, I'm with you on this one: there are at least some real people who seriously feel like that (TFA) about LLMs and it's pretty bonkers.

I thought these replies were parodies of the way the AI talked, but then I found the subreddit name. Thaaaaat's enough internet for today.

I have no idea. But either way I don’t think we’ve reckoned with the fact that a lot of people seriously can’t handle how a conversation simulator makes them feel…

Probably real. The internet / reddit is good at collecting the miniscule number of people with fringe thoughts around the world and then normalizing their ideas.

100-ish upvotes is nothing compared to groups with ideas like flat earth or sovcit.

I'm just seeking clarification.

It's pretty far out there for someone to form that strong of an emotional attachment to a piece of software. I couldn't tell if these people were serious or joking.

At the end of the day, I don't have a problem with it. It does make me sad to think of how lonely someone in these groups must be.