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socializer • yesterday at 5:40 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

I think we came up with this dubious category of things that supposedly require oversight, but only to a minimal extent. Viagra, contraceptives, eyeglasses. You can already get these with near-zero diligence if you take the telehealth route, but I guess there's still someone who feels it would be a pressing societal issue if you took matters into your own hands and ordered the wrong kind of eyeglasses.

So here, AI isn't doing anything clever, it's just asking "are you sure you don't have a heart condition" and "are you sure you're not a crazy person". We don't really need LLMs for that, but if it's a catalyst for liberalization, fine.


Replies

slg • yesterday at 6:00 PM

>So here, AI isn't doing anything clever, it's just asking "are you sure you don't have a heart condition" and "are you sure you're not a crazy person".

So are we just admitting that the "AI" here is the equivalent of a dialog box and this same change could have been enacted at any point in the last half century?

>We don't really need LLMs for that, but if it's a catalyst for liberalization, fine.

Is this liberalization or is it just further entrenching the bureaucracy that this change implies is already broken?

This whole thing just feels like a Chesterton's fence scenario in which we knock down the fence and then immediately rebuild it, only a few inches shorter and with weaker materials this time. I just don't see how that's any sort of victory for progress.

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toddmorey • yesterday at 5:45 PM

Yes and if you need a controlled prescription, it’s super painful. Can’t be transferred to another pharmacy, etc. extremely difficult to fill reliably.

And the medications that are controlled vs uncontrolled (at least here in Texas) seem completely random.

dfxm12 • today at 1:39 AM

You call this a potential catalyst for liberalization, but can you qualify this a bit with the context that you will have to pay an additional $5/mo subscription and upload your face along with a bunch of PII to who-knows-who?

It sounds like a catalyst for more red tape, more creepy Internet tracking, higher drug costs and more impossible to break subscriptions, all to help some health care companies' bottom lines. I don't consider this fine.