I swore off AI assistants until a stranger at the coffee shop told me how one calms his nerves.

3 comments

3 Comments

Hold on, @susan304, when you said a patient bot is less stressful than a human, that's wild to me. I get the idea of practicing tough talks alone, but calling that help feels like a cop-out. Real support means dealing with actual people who can mess up but also show real care. That stranger's story about calming nerves with a bot just sounds like avoiding the hard work of human connection. A script can't adapt to your real pain or offer genuine comfort when you're falling apart. Trusting a bot with deep stuff like PTSD seems risky and kinda sad.

susan3041mo ago

I read a piece last month about the Veterans Affairs office testing a chatbot to help with PTSD. The idea was it gives people a place to practice tough conversations anytime, without the fear of judgment from a real person. It's like having a script run through before the big show. That stranger's story kind of tracks, sometimes you just need to word-vomit your anxiety into the void. A patient bot is probably less stressful than dealing with a human who has their own messy feelings.

iris9401mo ago

Yeah Paul's "script" comment is sending me. Scripts are great until the bot hits you with "please state the nature of your emotional emergency" like it's a spaceship computer.