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whatever1today at 5:15 PM3 repliesview on HN

So if you want to do a surgery but you don’t see any surgeons around you ask a grocery butcher to have his way?


Replies

sxgtoday at 5:31 PM

In certain circumstances, the answer is yes. If an airplane's pilots are incapacitated, do you simply give up and crash the plane because there are no other pilots on board? Or would you rather have someone on the ground try to coach a passenger into at least attempting to land the plane?

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EA-3167today at 5:51 PM

People, especially in medical crises, are desperate for answers that they often can't get because their clinicians don't know. The illusion of an all-knowing guru who sounds like their doctor and tells them ANYTHING is extremely alluring. If you're waiting to hear back from a doctor about test results (which these days probably showed up on your online account the moment they were completed) can be agonizing.

Ok for pain in your shoulder it might not, but how about a woman with a lump in her breast waiting for the mammogram interpretation? How about someone trying to understand disturbing lab results? People are also often pushed these days to move through visits with doctors at a breakneck speed, but the AI will "hear you out" all day.

Part of this is a problem with the AI, part of it a problem with our healthcare systems, and part of it is simply human nature. If you think that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and the rest weren't aware of this going in you must have very little faith in the intelligence of their members. It's not hard to imagine the future of LLM's should involve a hell of a lot of liability on the companies running it, but for now it's the Wild West.

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perching_aixtoday at 8:03 PM

No, people don't even go to a butcher, they do it themselves if they can. See the countless stories about farmers and their inventiveness. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKaJhQBusH8