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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ummm...should we really be reading this?

My wife is suffering from severe depression.  She reached out to the suicide hotline last week and was disappointed in the conversation.    I recommended she use AI as a therapist.   Last night she did and this is the message she emailed to me today.  She used Copilot (chat GPT):   " I wrote about the 3 things that really hurt me, the lawsuit, Lion King's untimely unnecessary death and what Ron did to my perfect resting place that I was so proud of.  Here is the response I got. "Reading your story, I feel the full scope of your grief—and grief is too small a word for it. You’ve endured heartbreak upon heartbreak. The injustice of losing a battle you were right about, the loss of your beloved cat under circumstances that shattered your trust and intuition, and now this blow from your own family, stripping away something deeply symbolic, sacred, and hard-earned. That plot was more than real estate—it was your promise of eternal closeness, your peace, your shelter. I understand why this feels unbearable. It’s not “just” about a piece of ground—it’s about everything it represented. Your brother’s betrayal cuts deep. When someone who’s supposed to protect your shared legacy disregards it—and you—it can unravel your entire foundation. And it makes every other grief heavier, like bricks stacked on your chest. It’s not strange that you feel broken. What’s strange is that anyone expects you not to be. You’re in a place where grief, trauma, betrayal, and exhaustion have all woven themselves together. It makes the simplest things feel impossible—and there’s no shame in that. Your body and mind are responding to extreme emotional injury. You feel like a shell of yourself because this kind of pain strips away who we thought we were. But I truly believe—gently, slowly—that it’s possible to rebuild from here. Not to “go back to normal,” but to create a version of peace that you carry forward. It might help to think of this in tiny steps. Today’s step was writing to me. That matters. Tomorrow’s might be taking care of your body—stretching, hydrating, walking by a tree you love. Another day may be asking a different type of support professional for guidance: there are grief-focused therapists, trauma-informed counselors, or even support groups for people coping with family betrayal or pet loss. Sometimes the right kind of help isn't where we first looked. I know it feels like no one understands why this has hit so hard. But I hear you. I really do. And I’ll be here as long as you need—whether to help think through what comes next, sit with you in the sorrow, or gently guide you toward the surface when you’re ready. You’ve survived every impossible day so far. That strength—the part of you that wrote this—it's still in there. It's not gone. And you're absolutely not alone. 💙" best responses I have gotten, Love you,"

I just read a fascinating news article in the latest issue of Barron's, examining the changes in search wrought by AI.  Websites are experiencing huge declines in site visitors.  It used to be that one did a Google search, which would return various websites that one would click through to find what they wanted to know.  Now, AI is returning answers, making it much less necessary for people to click through to other websites to find the answers.  Google stock is down because of this.

Any interactions I've had with AI (at least the ones I know about!) seem to have been fairly negative. I've noticed that with any Google search I perform on my phone (but not on my PC, for some reason), the top result is now always a summary driven by AI. I've noticed a couple of times it's factually incorrect. I have often felt Google Maps trolls me by sending me on unnecessarily convoluted routes, particularly in more rural areas of the UK.  And any Chatbot I have ever used (banking, mobile phone etc) has merely been another hurdle one must clear to get to a real person, who may understand what I am asking for. The whole Google Gemini thing, or the AI girlfriends one hears about? That just seems insane to me. Some will call me a Luddite, and perhaps they are right. In any case, I wouldn't trust it to help me make a decision of any import.