alt Hacker NewsPlease, please, please don’t make this mistake. It is not a therapist. At best, it might be a facsimile of a life coach, but it does not have your best interests in mind.
It is easy to convince and trivial to make obsequious.
That is not what a therapist does. There’s a reason they spend thousands of hours in training; that is not an exaggeration.
Humans are complex. An LLM cannot parse that level of complexity.
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While I agree with you, I also find that an LLM can help organize my thoughts and come to realizations that I just didn't get to, because I hadn't explained verbally what I am thinking and feeling. Definitely not a substitute for human interaction and relationships, which can be fulfilling in many-many ways LLM's are not, but LLM's can still be helpful as long as you exercise your critical thinking skills. My preference remains always to talk to a friend though.
EDIT: seems like you made the same point in a child comment.
You seem to think therapists are only for those in dire straits. Yes, if you're at that point, definitely speak to a human. But there are many ordinary things for which "drop-in" therapist advice is also useful. For me: mild road rage, social anxiety, processing embarrassment from past events, etc.
The tools and reframing that LLMs have given me (Gemini 3.0/3.1 Pro) have been extremely effective and have genuinely improved my life. These things don't even cross the threshold to be worth the effort to find and speak to an actual therapist.