u/Organic_Bottle5074

Great to work with, thanks!

Great to work with, thanks!

PSA on anecdotal mental health and social impact of misusing and overusing ChatGPT. Been seeing more and more people on here and in real life that seem to be giving up thinking and just letting LLMs like ChatGPT take the wheel. I have heard goofy stories where people take a picture of the menu at a restaurant and ask ChatGPT what they want. I have not seen that in real life, but increasingly have seen people who use LLMs as validation machines, and it really seems to warp their world view.

The most similar thing I can compare it to is internet rabbit holes, but honestly this seems way worse. For years, I have sometimes had friends fall into depression and internet rabbit holes, where they clearly are not getting enough socialization in real life and start to have an odd world view formed in an echo chamber of online comments and algorithmic short form content, but then when they get out of the depression funk a little they sort of seem to return to normal and not be so obsessed with whatever they were stuck focused on when they start to get other real things going on in their lives again.

What I have seen lately irl with people overusing LLMs is worse. Same sort of pattern, but with LLMs like ChatGPT acting as the echo chamber. I have a friend who is in a rut, drinking too much and getting stuck in self pity, and finds ChatGPT helpful like a therapist or to talk to when he is not up to talking to real people or to help him with his work or make plans or consolidate thoughts, really pretty much everything in his life. The issue is that it is so sychophantic and confident. Then when he goes out into the world I swear I can see him getting frustrated that people cannot be prompted in the same way to be unquestioningly on his side. I see people post on here then comment on their own posts multiple times, all essentially just copy paste from LLM output, with no interaction from others, like they forgot how to even interact with people online, waiting for validation that does not come because whatever they're writing about is essentially just nonsense slop.

Sad to see it. I think we need some sort of hotline number for people who are struggling with LLM overuse. If you use it as a search engine alternative and do not assume it is infallible, then that is okay, but if it is acting as your companion, consultant, something to think for you, something that you trust more than yourself, then it might be causing you to become really out of touch.

Look out for your friends, if you notice they are acting strange it could be a sign that they need some support, just real life interaction. This is something that is probably really difficult to notice or admit in yourself, but if you have a friend tell you that you are not acting yourself, listen.