frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Illinois bans use of artificial intelligence for mental health therapy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/08/12/illinois-ai-therapy-ban/
97•reaperducer•1h ago

Comments

lukev•37m ago
Good. It's difficult to imagine a worse use case for LLMs.
create-username•32m ago
Yes, there is. AI assisted homemade neurosurgery
Tetraslam•21m ago
:( but what if i wanna fine-tune my brain weights
kirubakaran•15m ago
Is it illegal to stick a fork in the wall socket?
kirubakaran•21m ago
If Travis Kalanick can do vibe research at the bleeding edge of quantum physics[1], I don't see why one can't do vibe brain surgery. It isn't really rocket science, is it? [2]

[1] https://futurism.com/former-ceo-uber-ai

[2] If you need /s here to be sure, perhaps it's time for some introspection

perlgeek•19m ago
Just using an LLM as is for therapy, maybe with an extra prompt, is a terrible idea.

On the other hand, I could image some more narrow uses where an LLM could help.

For example, in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, there are different methods that are pretty prescriptive, like identifying cognitive distortions in negative thoughts. It's not too hard to imagine an app where you enter a negative thought on your own and exercise finding distortions in it, and a specifically trained LLM helps you find more distortions, or offer clearer/more convincing versions of thoughts that you entered yourself.

I don't have a WaPo subscription, so I cannot tell which of these two very different things have been banned.

delecti•7m ago
LLMs would be just as terrible at that usecase as any other kind of therapy. They don't have logic, and can't determine a logical thought from an illogical one. They tend to be overly agreeable, so they might just reinforce existing negative thoughts.

It would still need a therapist to set you on the right track for independent work, and has huge disadvantages compared to the current state-of-the-art, a paper worksheet that you fill out with a pen.

zoeysmithe•31m ago
I was just reading about a suicide tied to AI chatbot 'therapy' uses.

This stuff is a nightmare scenario for the vulnerable.

vessenes•16m ago
If you want to feel worried, check the Altman AMA on reddit. A lottttt of people have a parasocial relationship with 4o. Not encouraging.
PeterCorless•15m ago
Endless AI nightmare fuel.

https://hai.stanford.edu/news/exploring-the-dangers-of-ai-in...

sys32768•4m ago
This happens to real therapists too.
hathawsh•30m ago
Here is what Illinois says:

https://idfpr.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idfpr/news...

I get the impression that it is now illegal in Illinois to claim that an AI chatbot can take the place of a licensed therapist or counselor. That doesn't mean people can't do what they want with AI. It only means that counseling services can't offer AI as a cheaper replacement for a real person.

Am I wrong? This sounds good to me.

romanows•22m ago
In another comment I wondered whether a general chatbot producing text that was later determined in a courtroom to be "therapy" would be a violation. I can read the bill that way, but IANAL.
hathawsh•15m ago
That's an interesting question that hasn't been tested yet. I suspect we won't be able to answer the question clearly until something bad happens and people go to court (sadly.) Also IANAL.
PeterCorless•19m ago
Correct. It is more provider-oriented proscription ("You can't say your chatbot is a therapist.") It is not a limitation on usage. You can still, for now, slavishly fall in love with your AI and treat it as your best friend and therapist.

There is a specific section that relates to how a licensed professional can use AI:

Section 15. Permitted use of artificial intelligence.

(a) As used in this Section, "permitted use of artificial intelligence" means the use of artificial intelligence tools or systems by a licensed professional to assist in providing administrative support or supplementary support in therapy or psychotherapy services where the licensed professional maintains full responsibility for all interactions, outputs, and data use associated with the system and satisfies the requirements of subsection (b).

(b) No licensed professional shall be permitted to use artificial intelligence to assist in providing supplementary support in therapy or psychotherapy where the client's therapeutic session is recorded or transcribed unless:

(1) the patient or the patient's legally authorized representative is informed in writing of the following:

(A) that artificial intelligence will be used; and

(B) the specific purpose of the artificial intelligence tool or system that will be used; and

(2) the patient or the patient's legally authorized representative provides consent to the use of artificial intelligence.

Source: Illinois HB1806

https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus/FullText?GAID=18...

romanows•5m ago
Yes, but also "An... entity may not provide... therapy... to the public unless the therapy... services are conducted by... a licensed professional".

It's not obvious to me as a non-lawyer whether a chat history could be decided to be "therapy" in a courtroom. If so, this could count as a violation. Probably lots of law around this stuff for lawyers and doctors cornered into giving advice at parties already that might apply (e.g., maybe a disclaimer is enough to workaround the prohibition)?

PeterCorless•23m ago
Here is the text of Illinois HB1806:

https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus/FullText?GAID=18...

wisty•15m ago
As far as I can tell, a lot of therapy is just good common-sense advice and a bunch of 'tricks' to get the patient to actually follow it. Basically CBT and "get the patient to think they figured out the solution themselves (develop insight)". Yes, there's some serious cases where more is required and a few (ADHD) where meds are effective; but a lot of the time the patient is just an expert at rejecting helpful advice, often because they insist they're a special case that needs special treatment.

Therapists are more valuable that advice from a random friend (for therapy at least) because they can act when triage is necessary (e.g. send in the men in white coats, or refer to something that's not just CBT) and mostly because they're really good at cutting through the bullshit without having the patient walk out.

AIs are notoriously bad at cutting through bullshit. You can always 'jailbreak' an AI, or convince it of bad ideas. It's entirely counterproductive to enable their crazy (sorry, 'maladaptive') behaviour but that's what a lot of AIs will do.

Even if someone makes a good AI, there's always a bad AI in the next tab, and people will just open up a new tab to find an AI gives them the bad advice they want, because if they wanted to listen to good advice they probably wouldn't need to see a therapist. If doctor shopping is as fast and free as opening a new tab, most mental health patients will find a bad doctor rather than listen to a good one.

Sick as a Dog

https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insights/latest-and-featured/eotm/sick-as-a-dog
1•johntfella•6m ago•0 comments

Why operating system package maintainers matter

https://briancallahan.net/blog/20250813.html
2•LorenDB•11m ago•0 comments

Structured binding packs in GCC 16

https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1moebfm/structured_binding_packs_in_gcc_16/
2•ibobev•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cromulant

https://github.com/madprops/cromulant/blob/main/screenshots.md
2•Toby1VC•14m ago•0 comments

Reflections on LeetCode and LSAT in my 30s

https://andreagao.com/posts/reflection-standardized-tests/
2•gytrcrt•16m ago•0 comments

China Uses the Cppcc to Conduct "United Front Diplomacy" with North Korea

https://www.38north.org/2025/08/keeping-the-door-open-how-china-uses-the-cppcc-to-conduct-united-front-diplomacy-with-north-korea/
2•EA-3167•17m ago•0 comments

Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-080-great-ideas-in-theoretical-computer-science-spring-2008/
2•ibobev•18m ago•0 comments

A poet's long-forgotten daughter created the first algorithm

https://adamgrant.micro.blog/2025/08/13/how-a-poets-longforgotten-daughter.html
2•hidelooktropic•19m ago•3 comments

sshrc: Bring your .bashrc, .vimrc, etc. with you when you SSH

https://github.com/cdown/sshrc
2•thunderbong•21m ago•0 comments

Kubernetes will solve YAML headaches with KYAML

https://thenewstack.io/kubernetes-is-getting-a-better-yaml/
2•thecosmicfrog•22m ago•0 comments

A virtual machine with native AI instructions

3•noreplydev•22m ago•0 comments

Realbotix

https://www.realbotix.com/
2•fcpguru•25m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What's stopping Guix from building static binaries for various targets?

2•tetris11•26m ago•0 comments

Vibe Coding Awareness Month

https://hellotonic.com/blog/vibe-coding
1•chadmckenna•29m ago•1 comments

Management of IP numbers by peg-DHCP (1998)

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2322
1•sjmulder•35m ago•0 comments

Max Read's 'A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple's Marketing Materials'

https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/max_read_literary_history_fake_apple_texts
1•Bogdanp•37m ago•0 comments

Z-Wave Reborn – Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/08/13/home-assistant-connect-zwa-2/
2•mike-cardwell•38m ago•0 comments

Is McKinsey losing its crown to AI? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXAXNcRs7gQ
2•mgh2•40m ago•1 comments

Amazon Ads Multi-Touch Attribution

https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08209
1•dakial1•41m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cinematic Rolplay with Wan 2.2

https://www.reveriedr.com
1•amit0365•41m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is there an AI that can read code aloud and explain it?

2•djfobbz•43m ago•0 comments

Evals as Code: CI for LLMs with Dagger

https://dagger.io/blog/evals-as-code
2•shad42•44m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Is https://web.whatsapp.com/ loading for you atm?

2•gjvc•44m ago•2 comments

A Good Find

https://justinjackson.ca/good-find
1•mooreds•46m ago•0 comments

If You Could Fix One Thing About AI Search, What Would It Be?

1•zyruh•47m ago•2 comments

Eca: Editor Code Assistant – AI pair programming capabilities agnostic of editor

https://github.com/editor-code-assistant/eca
18•simonpure•49m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Deploy Any Web App Directly from Claude Code

https://disco.cloud/blog/deploy-any-web-app-directly-from-claude-code/
1•gregsadetsky•50m ago•0 comments

The Tulpa in Your Pocket

https://default.blog/p/the-tulpa-in-your-pocket
2•exolymph•51m ago•0 comments

Water Cremation (Alkaline Hydrolysis)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cremation
3•1659447091•51m ago•1 comments

Temporary tattoo could detect an unwanted drug in your drink

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-temporary-tattoo-unwanted-drug.html
3•wglb•56m ago•1 comments