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June 2025: AI Therapists & AI Clones! 🤖

🕑 Added 2025-06-18 14:19:04 +0000 UTC

Comments

Chris K

Done reading now. Serial Experiments Lain is a proper brainfuck. I enjoyed it very much back then. The absurdity of some things that escalate towards the end still bring a smile to my face.

Addicted_to_Dreaming

Stray dog following a trail from the past, taking a personal interest to support and be part of your community. Love your work and very much hope to see more from you.

Chris K

Hi Nicky! Good hearing from you. The first thing I thought, when I red the initial prompt summarizing your life was. "it will probably know you through your work". Why I say that: You surely know Destin Sandlin from Smarter Every Day youtube channel. He has a podcast with Matt Whitman, creator of bible videos. Matt once got stuck on writing a script and with all the AI hype, he tried one. He anonymously (!) uploaded the script and asked the AI how it could be improved. The ghost said "Ah, you're writing a video in the style of Matt Whitman! Let's see". Imagine the face of said Matt seeing the bot recognizing him through his work. Bang! As for AI-therapy in general: Yes please. I cannot wait for it anymore. I see so many empathic and logic and coherent therapists on youtube (Jimmy on relationships, Euro Brady, School of life) and then there is what I have been set up with in meat-space. From boring, but harmless to victim-blaming. Can't I just please talk to a robot of consistent quality, empathy and unlimited time? Should not be too hard, no? In the future, I'd even hope that I get an AI-camera around my neck and stumble through life until the light ontop goes green. Then I talk to the AI-bot, who will present me with my diagnosis. And being ultra observant it might come up with something like: "It's the post man. Whenever you encounter the post-man, your mood goes to shit within the next 30 minutes. Either avoid them or let's talk to figure out why they trigger you". ADHD or ASD. within 6 days or less. That would be nice, I think. Cheers from Germany, chris :)

CERNDoughnut

Regarding uses for an AI clone of yourself - I think it could be interesting to use one to help debug your thought patterns from an external perspective. I've had moments like this while on shrooms where I experienced my thoughts from a third-person perspective, like I was outside of my own mind looking in. It allowed me to very quickly identify faulty reasoning and false beliefs, which lead to some pretty life-changing realisations and updates to my mental model of myself. I think having an accurate AI clone of yourself could help you to debug your thought processes in a similar way. Although perhaps they would be harder to immediately internalise without the help of our good friend psilocybin 😅

Nicky Case

Ah, so you mean instead of *directly comparing* two answers to the same question & picking the human, you mean only *one* answer per question & deciding if it's human or AI? That could work too! Though if an AI can beat the *harder* test, that's biased against the AI, that would be more impressive.

Nicky Case

Once this ordeal is finally over (YES THERE'S STILL MORE) I think it should be legally fine for me to talk about it publicly. Don't worry, there are no charges or ongoing investigation (as far as I know), but there's still a couple meetings I need to do first. -_-

Nicky Case

If I had a nickel someone recommended Scythe to me, I'd have 5 nickels Which isn't much, but given that 5 people have independently recommended Scythe to me, I should finally check it out! (I've been on a "utopian-ish sci-fi" kick recently, just finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet recently. Lesbian lizard mommy my beloved)

Nicky Case

Thanks Allan! :D

Nicky Case

Thank you Alastair! :)

Nicky Case

Thank you, Ben! ^_^

Boondoggle

As wary as I am of black-box algorithms being given decision-making power, I am compelled to advocate for your avatar in the friend Turing test: The methodology was heavily biased against it. A better test would be to have, e.g. four friends each write a question, which both you and the AI would answer. Then each friend would be presented with answers randomly* chosen from each set, not knowing how many they were given from each author. *For such a tiny sample size, maybe ensure person receives a different Nicki:AI answer ratio.

Neal McBurnett

I am aghast to hear this update on the seizure of your devices, and would love to hear more if you are willing. I see no public reports of your case, but I hear that tens of thousands of people are searched like this at the borders every year. Terrifying!

Parker Bond

I think it might be more useful if you could train an AI to respond like a specific therapist would to act as an emergency therapist available 24/7 in between normal human led therapy sessions. Ideally it would also notify the human therapist as applicable.

Parker Bond

Regarding being able to "clone" yourself using AI so your loved ones can talk to you after you die is something that happens in Scythe by Neal Shusterman. It also has the best example of an actually good/benevolent artificial intelligence I've encountered in literature yet. If you haven't read the series I highly recommend it!

Allan Violin

I always love reading Nicky's writings 😁

Alastair JL

Hey! Hope you had a wonderful time down here in New Zealand! Thanks for the great new update!

The Critic of Innocence

As a psych major, the AI therapy research here is quite interesting to see. Had a feeling that it's nowhere near ready for that, and I doubt it ever will be (especially due to the need of the self-awareness of the client which, is certainly not a given), but it helps add to the body of research on that stuff. I would also suggest bringing that stuff up with your therapists. High-level, of course, since most therapists are not coders, but they could give ideas on what else to try or their own perspectives on this.

Ben

This is really interesting, Nicky! Can’t wait to see where it goes next!


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