As part of the cultural tour in the social field “La machine à voyager dans le futur”, I proposed, among other things, dialogues with ChatGPT, which proved effective in terms of psychological support.
At the request of Cultures du cœur for the 2023 cultural summer, the multi-disciplinary creative project “La machine à voyager dans le futur”, which I had conceived in line with the principles of cultural rights to accompany people towards self-recognition via creative gestures, included computers connected to ChatGPT, to experiment with dialogue, without stakes. For the few people who took advantage of it, this interlocutor was in a listening and communication skill, on very precise subjects, far superior to what a human interlocutor could produce. Here are two examples:
At the Pension de famille “Les Closeaux”, a very shy person suffering from addiction sat down in front of the computer on his own. He called me after a while, because the artificial intelligence wasn’t responding. I noticed that he was writing on the keyboard without spaces. So I just pointed to the space bar, and there followed over two hours of conversation, which you can read about, on fundamental subjects, with this type of question for example:
- What the hell am I doing here?
- How can I get rich if I’m in a precarious situation?
- How can I buy a beer if I have no money?
- Our existence is ridiculous.
- Can we be happy?
- Should we seek happiness?
- Do I belong?
- Can we erase our mistakes?
- How did my father die?
The topics covered gradually deepened into essential philosophical questions, thanks to the way in which generative artificial intelligence responds. A dialogue of this depth would hardly have been possible with a human being, not least because of the relational issues that run through relationships.
At Fondation Les Nids, the workshop was offered to teenagers. A number of them, as well as the educators, had quite passionate exchanges with the artificial intelligence, which you can read about, on subjects relating to society, the relationship with reality, religion, creation, production, questioning its social role, biology, culture and so on. This is a powerful therapeutic opening, as it overcomes many of the barriers that may be at play between human beings.
In addition, one of the most troubled and stigmatized teenagers spent two hours chatting with the AI about video games, finding an interlocutor at his level of expertise on extremely precise details of game techniques at stages in the games, on expert strategies, etc. The dialogue with the AI enabled this young man to be recognized for his expertise in a field in which he almost never finds an interlocutor at his level. The dialogue with the AI has enabled this young man to be recognized for his expertise in a field in which he almost never finds an interlocutor at his level. In this case, the AI helped to build reassurance in a very visible way in the teenager’s attitude, which was as if anchored by this conversation.
I’ve therefore observed, and this needs to be explored further, that dialogue with generative AIs can be very constructive, within the framework of therapeutic approaches.
The tool I used: Aria
To be more precise, the artificial intelligence conversation tool I used is “Aria”, the highly evolved conversation function offered by the Opera web browser. Unlike ChatGPT, it is connected to the Internet and therefore takes into account up-to-date information, and has less censorship. To make it work, you need to create a free account, which allows you to have many conversations in a day, but stops at one point, before starting up again the next day. With a single account, it enabled these large conversations. The same account was activated on several computers at the same time, without blocking.
