On the couch with an AI robo-doc asking me personal questions "Tell me about your mother." I should have guessed that was coming. I am on a virtual couch, being diagnosed by a digital psychiatrist. Naturally it's a virtual couch. Being British, I don't own such a thing in real life. I have various other types of soft furniture and even once considered buying one of those reclining …
At the end of my annual review the health centre nurse had to run through a set of life-style questions on her computer and interpret my responses.
At the end the computer's damning categorisation of me was "inactive". At which the nurse yelled at the screen "rubbish!". Earlier she had complimented me on the muscle definition on my legs from the amount of walking I do.
No doubt my medical record now states categorically that I am a lazy slob.
At least an AI doc would listen to all your symptoms and hopefully not suffer from the form of paradoelia that human docs do when any symptom you mention is a symptom of what they want you to have "Stubbed your toe? Ah yes, IBD" "Sneezes and sniffles? Ah yes, classic compound fracture symptoms" "Sodomised your Mother? Have some viagra".
No! Not that kind of movements!
So lending someone your phone should give interesting results.
Much like loaning your fit bit to an active friend to up your step count.
Presumably you have to be heavily invested in not gaming the system and very trusting of the results to cooperate with this kind of thing.
In which case lack of sanity is probably a foregone conclusion.
Strange story about that...
...I sticky tape all the cameras on my computers, especially when working in sensitive areas like server rooms. Security offizer was doing a walk-down, spotted my stickies, and pitched a fit. So I said the obvious, "Um, ma'am, they're a LOT more secure this way. And you are all about secure, right?"
She replies, just about foaming at the mouth, "Damn it, I ordered you to take that off!"
Me, trying to stay calm, "WTF is your problem? The only use would be to spy on me, and given the nature if this space I cant imagine that you have the authorities to do so. Let's go check with the head... if you ARE playing with these in our server spaces you will be in dheep schitt."
At that point she shouted something inarticulate, requested that I perform a nearly impossible autoerotic task, and went away.
Please tell me there is an AI shrink that can fix a person like that?
Patient being shown Rorschach ink blots...
"Two goats copulating with a house-wife"
"Hmm - next one"
"A giant bat receiving fellatio from a nubile ballet dancer"
"and the last one"
"Gangbang involving the entire nation of Luxembourg"
"Well my diagnosis is complete - you are a sex addict."
"ME.. me a sex addict?? You're the one with the dirty pictures!"
A mate in the 70s was into brain chemistry, his own, which he used to augment with interesting chemicals he could buy on the street. One morning he was found naked on a front garden rockery with his neatly folded clothes as a pillow, he was arrested went in fro t of the beak next morning and held pending bail as he had had a pocketful of Mandrax.
While being held the cops sent him for psychiatric reports, in answer to every question he replied ' I know the answer but I' m not telling you because you aren't asking the right question. An example of his sense of humour. the shrink reported him as schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies, they finally got it right as manic depressive a few years later after he had committed suicide.
NB the schizo report was based on about 10 minutes of work.
This post has been deleted by its author
"He is not suffering from any mental illness."
He works in tech journalism, training and digital publishing.
Now, I think it's time for another visit at The Home for Deranged Scientists.
"even once considered buying one of those reclining armchairs which flip up a footstool, slice off your fingers and terrify the cat as you push back, but never a couch."
I finally persuaded my wife to have one of these post hip replacement and it was the most sensible thing I did. It's operated by two buttons, is silent, the dog ignored it within a few hours and the only way you could slice off a finger is to lie on the ground and operate the retraction mechanism while sticking a finger in the pantograph that works the footstool. This does, to my mind, suggest that Mr. Dabbs is not a totally reliable product reviewer. (Though usually he is spot on.)
The thing he has missed, however, is that if the government ever required the NHS to use AI psychiatrists they would certainly contract for them with a certain French company that does disability assessments.
"Do you ever have suicidal thoughts?"
"Would you like me to suggest some effective and cheap ways to commit suicide?"
I remember being put on a stress management course many years ago (mandatory for the whole company, HR's latest brainchild) whilst working as a sys administrator & general dog's body. We had to fill in a questionnaire and we got a scored on the stress in our life, after which we would be taught how to manage it. I was working 60-100 hours a week at the time because the company had doubled in size. I had also suffered a recent bereavement. When the "qualified" trainer looked at my score I was called a liar and asked to leave for not taking it seriously. We all managed the stress by going to the pub that night. Cures everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
"I should have guessed that was coming." It's been going on since circa 1964. Since then it has evolved from 'parody' to one of many attempts at passing the Turing test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
Developer Tom Bender still makes his rendition from the 1990s, named Eliza, freely available to the public, as well as its amusingly evil twin Azile. They both run on old PPC Mac OS. I remember having great fun turning the table on the analyst, flipping it into that which was being analyzed.
http://www.tex-edit.com
In 1972, ELIZA (as "The Doctor", at BBN (tenex?) ) and PARRY (at SAIL) had a conversation at the first ICCC ... Well, they had a conversation that was followed over the ARPANET during the ICCC. It was immortalized in RFC 439.
More leftovers from SAIL here. Not much has changed in 45 years ...
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