With Ai it's clear, because of Kaede's actions. The relationship is explicitly unhealthy, and it's easily noticeable by a third party who only hears about the events and finds out a bit more about the personal dynamics in it. The fact that Kaede's married, and what her husband said, it gives the image of her just playing with Ai's feelings, and she will leave when she's done. That's a massive red flag.I said this elsewhere but it applies here too:
I disagree. Considering how Ai is being treated by Kaede right now and how dependently Ai behaves, I wouldn't be so quick to say that girl was wrong. I think this chapter was showing how unhealthy Kaede's views are for her and her "partners." Her past girlfriend recognizes this and bails, something we should want Ai to repeat.
It wasn't just because people said something. It was that she saw more of the world and could finally compare her very isolated relationship with Kaede to others. Once she does this she begins to realize how abnormal their relationship structure is.
Isn't that exactly what's happening to Ai? Would we consider what we know of Ai and Kaede's relationship healthy? Or Kaede and her husband? Now we even know how self-focused Kaede's thoughts have been.
Ai's and that girl's story are actually the same: Ai also has met someone new who tells her things are unhealthy and she's also expanded her horizons. She's learning about other forms of relationships outside of her relationship with Kaede. Now, hopefully she also recognizes how unhealthy her past relationship with Kaede has been along with this absurdly selfish game of hide and go seek. She should make the same decision as that girl, but the narrative parallel makes me a bit nervous.
The girlfriend isn't presented in a negative or mysterious light. She speaks sincerely from what we can see, and based on the little shown of her, nothing is given narratively to suggest she's a duplicitous person. She's presented as the opposite.With Ai it's clear, because of Kaede's actions. The relationship is explicitly unhealthy, and it's easily noticeable by a third party who only hears about the events and finds out a bit more about the personal dynamics in it. The fact that Kaede's married, and what her husband said, it gives the image of her just playing with Ai's feelings, and she will leave when she's done. That's a massive red flag.
But based on what we've seen in the chapter from her first relationship, Kaede was acting as a master manipulator. She could see what her partner was lacking and provided it - support, encouragement, or even a response to her feelings. From what we've seen of events, nothing was pointing to a significant co-dependency, at least in my opinion. Kaede didn't seem to alienate her partner either - she was alienating herself, and Kaede just went with that dynamic. The only thing that might have been a redish flag is that Kaede didn't seem to have her own opinions and wants in the relationship, and just supported her girlfriend on every step. But that in itself does not mark this relationship as unhealthy to the point of unilaterally breaking up. It may sound a bit transactional, but if she cared about Kaede at all, she owed her a good attempt at talking it through and making it work.
And, just to reiterate, my comment does not suggest that the relationship is healthy from the reader's perspective, just that the girlfriend had no indicators, at least from what we've seen, to point to the conclusion she reached. To me, that reads more as her using it as an excuse to break up her LDR, rather than picking up on Kaede's faults that, as was established, only a select few can pick up on, and only from direct interactions.
For the most part.Do not use Ai chatbots for therapy as your conversations become training data for it. Not a great idea to bear sensitive info into a recording software
I agree we didnt get enough to know what their relationship was like but I think we're giving Kaede too much credit for Akane's success. All we know is she gave advice to talk to her mom. The rest is regular relationship stuff and Akane's own achievements-actually getting in and passing exams and keeping up with the hobby as Kaede tagged along. After Akane gave the "I can't live without you" Kaede got her "true life" until the breakup. Then after the breakup it was on to the next person with dreams for her to live through.Kaede got to experience "life" through Akane and Akane got love, encouragement and support that she needed to achieve her dreams.
Still a bad idea to rely on AI for therapy. I agree that AI is good at noticing patterns, but that's one aspect of therapy. I don't think it can express empathy, infer context, read body language, etc. An AI model would look for patterns that generalize the individual patient to the whole.The point about pattern matching being empowering stands, despite the world being less than ideal.
Kaede is irresponsible, and any better perspective on herself or peers would have prevented harm. Web search and AI present similar issues here. In her case I doubt they'd make her worse.Still a bad idea to rely on AI for therapy. I agree that AI is good at noticing patterns, but that's one aspect of therapy. I don't think it can express empathy, infer context, read body language, etc. An AI model would look for patterns that generalize the individual patient to the whole.
If you programmed an AI to do CBT/DBT, it can only work within the bounds of the assumptions of CBT/DBT. One of my concerns with Cognitive behavioral therapy is that it assumes your problems are the result of wrong-thinking, and should be solved by identifying the patterns of thoughts/behaviors and reforming them until you do the right-thinking. It does not address material causes for our thoughts or behaviors, other than to say "once you get the right kind of thoughts you'll be able to fix your material problems." While the practices of CBT/DBT are helpful, they are not 100% effective.
There's another concern which is that an AI will be given programming rules that conform to the worldview of whoever controls the AI, and that can make the AI focus on things that are either A) Irelevant or B) Harmful. I'm thinking of Elon's frequent tampering with Grok. If a deranged billionaire has some personal axe to grind, the AI would be forced to give bad advice. An actual human therapist has a better chance of filtering what the boss tells them to do.
My final concern is that AI can be trained by its users to say crazy things, or Hallucinate facts based on patterns of speech. It's funny for healthy people who can engage critically, but it could be dangerous for someone unwell.