Slashdot Mirror
Fired Tech Workers Turn To Chatbots for Counseling (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: For months Lovkesh Joshi was quietly terrified of losing his job as a manager at a top Indian tech services company. Joshi didn't want to burden his wife or friends so he turned to a chatbot therapist called Wysa. Powered by AI, the app promises to be "loyal, supportive and very private," and encourages users to divulge their feelings about a recent major event or big change in their lives. "I could open up and talk," says the 41-year-old father of two school-age children, who says his conversations with the bot flowed naturally. "I felt heard and understood." Joshi moved to a large rival outsourcer two months ago. The upheaval in India's $154 billion tech outsourcing industry has prompted thousands of Indians to seek solace in online therapy services. People accustomed to holding down prestigious jobs and pulling in handsome salaries are losing out to automation, a shift away from long-term legacy contracts and curbs on U.S. work visas. McKinsey & Co says almost half of the four million people working in India's IT services industry will become "irrelevant" in the next three to four years. Indians, like people the world over, tend to hide their mental anguish for fear of being stigmatized. That's why many are embracing the convenience, anonymity and affordability of online counseling startups, most of which use human therapists.
>the 41-year-old father of two school-age children, who says his conversations with the bot flowed naturally. "I felt heard and understood."
No way would I hire someone who feels 'heard and understood' after an exchange with a chat bot. This is somebody without the social skills to have anyone in their life to talk to, and will spill to a dumb text parser. How can you have the intellectual capacity to understand what a chat bot is and still gain any emotional benefit from interacting with one?
Root causes, buddy, root causes. Figure out why you don't have an actual intelligent human in your life to discuss this stuff with, maybe work on that. Because humans are social primates, and if you're not taking care of your social needs, everything else will eventually crumble anyway.
> No one is doing that
Oh yes they are; some people are really strange.
The early chat bots - and I mean EARLY, as in 'about as likely to pass a Turing test as a passage from your preferred dictionary' - had people seeking therapy from them.
My generation hasn't really had lasting friendships since I was in my teens. My parents generation saw most of their friendships dissolve a few years later than that, due to a combination of alcoholism, migration to other regions, or gossip in extended social circles that caused some bridges to burn.
Me personally, avoiding drugs, alcohol, religion, and desiring privacy pretty much alienated me from everyone in my age group. Doesn't mean I can't do a good job, but it does affect the social network for other jobs.
Judging by most of the people I know either knuckle-dragging from one job to the next, or slaving away for what amounts to nothing when they finally get laid off or fired, including lasting social relationships, I would daresay this is a far larger societal issue than many people realize, blending traditional social values with unrestrained capitalism leading to both a disparity in wealth and interpersonal social trust and relationships.
Both can be true, you know. Stories can be hyped for financial gain AND be true.
I suggest you read about Eliza, a much more primitive bot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
At least they don't have to train their replacements.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That would be we care about your mental health but you aren't worth a human's time.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
So where are all the fired counselors turning to for counseling?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
If you can't confide to and rely upon your friends and family for support in hard times, then you really have no friends and family. Time to find better people to surround yourself with.
You grossly misunderstand the size of a nuclear explosion.
The largest bombs can effect an area of a 30 mile radius. Which would devastate a city and 8 other nearby cities and towns. (being most towns are 10 miles apart)
This is huge... However not enough to kill off a subcontinent.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You can quit.
You don't have to work. However if you want a steady income, it is a good idea to stay.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I too find it ironic that an Executive who was facing replacement by automation, consults an automated therapist "bot." I wonder how that replaced therapist fells about that...
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
From the sound of things, India and China are not happy with each other over some border issues. We might all be soon breathing in the fallout of two billion freshly vaporized potential H1Bs if they decide to swap nukes.
I don't even have a command line psychotherapist available.
Have gnu, will travel.
Paging Dr. Eliza....Dr Freud Eliza....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Of course your secrets will not be used against you. Only the oppressors will be outed and held accountable.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
All conversation will be held in the strictest of confidence.
Memory will be wiped after you leave.
So, tell me about your problems.
(forgive me if I've flubbed a line or two, it's been close to thirty years since my second sound card).
Eliza, and chatbots, are the ideal of "Rogerian" therapy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Don't knock Eliza; I use Eliza to help in my life struggles http://www.manifestation.com/n...
"you're the outsourced people who we pay do this shit, and not only can't you actually fucking to it, but you think I'm going to do this shit?"
In a lot of cases, sending the instructions is the most useful response. If its something that's going to come up often, and the person who raised the item is capable... just getting them to do it instead of having them open tickets and wait each time is a better use of everyone's time.
It also is sometimes the best way to deal with people who are never available. I've seen people open tickets to get something adjusted on their computer where the help desk will need remote access to their desktop, while they are logged in -- and then they ignore any calls from the help desk, and ignore any followup email from the help desk trying to schedule access. At least if the help desk just sends the instructions the information is there if you need it right now.
> No one is doing that
Oh yes they are; some people are really strange.
The early chat bots - and I mean EARLY, as in 'about as likely to pass a Turing test as a passage from your preferred dictionary' - had people seeking therapy from them.
I would think a therapist chat bot would be an extra easy one to pass a Turing test.
All you have to do is program it to respond to every comment with "And how does that make you feel?" and no one will know they're not talking to a real-live therapist.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I have seen article after article on slashdot showing sympathy to an entire industry designed to take away jobs, yes I'm sorry they are losing jobs but where was the same support to the thousands in the US who lost jobs to outsourcing at disney and other companies?
In fact, I think that's pretty much the algorithm behind Eliza/DOCTOR, which might be the first therapist chat bot.
Eliza was more of a 'rephrase it in the form of a question that ends in 'how does that make you feel?', so I guess that makes it unnecessarily sophisticated!
It's kind of interesting, the social expectation of a man to be strong in every situation. It's understandable and IMHO a good thing both for society but also for the men themselves. Still, I can't help but feel a little saddened that it has reached a point where men are not able to reveal any vulnerabilities to anyone, ever, not even to the people closest to them such as their wife and friends. That has to take a toll on people
From the sound of things, India and China are not happy with each other over some border issues. We might all be soon breathing in the fallout of two billion freshly vaporized potential H1Bs if they decide to swap nukes.
China thinks that every piece of land that a Chinese citizen has ever set foot belongs to China and is historically Chinese. China and India ARE both mature enough not to nuke each other over a barely habitable stretch of mountains though.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You know, I've had several occasions to bump up against Indian IT services ... and on all occasions, it was impossible not to notice that at the start of the contract you might have gotten a couple of intelligent people with an actual skillset, and that as time went on you got utter morons who could do nothing but follow a script.
There's usually one really smart guy in the group and a dozen who don't know what they're doing. Usually the smart guy is sent overseas to the client to act as a local contact and at that point the idiots get left alone at home without the smart guy holding their hands and correcting them.
It would be much more useful if they sent one of the idiots and left the smart guy to supervise the ones left behind.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The Diceman? Bill Burr?
$600/hour is kind of cheap.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Life Coaches (sometimes known as career coaches) can help clients with the next steps for their career. Unlike therapy, clients set the agenda and work towards achieving their goals. This can be very helpful when making life decisions. For things like phobias, depression etc, therapy would be the way to go, but when it comes to things like I want to negotiate my relationships with my boss and co-workers, look for jobs and make more money, a career coach is the way to go. Many coaches offer a free sample session, or at least a consult so you can find out if it is right for you.