Technology

One needs a study for that?

A statistical model of language isn't the same as medical training??????????????????????????

If you want to read an article that’s optimistic about AI and healthcare, but where if you start asking too many questions it falls apart, try this one

https://text.npr.org/2026/01/30/nx-s1-5693219/

Because it’s clear that people are starting to use it and many times the successful outcome is it just tells you to see a doctor. And doctors are beginning to use it, but they should have the professional expertise to understand and evaluate the output. And we already know that LLMs can spout bullshit.

For the purposes of using and relying on it, I don’t see how it is very different from gambling. You keep pulling the lever, oh excuse me I mean prompting, until you get the outcome you want.

its basically a convoluted version of webmd. even MD mods in medical subs are more accurate.

This is a major problem with studies like this : they approach from a position of assuming that AI doctors would be competent rather than a position of demanding why AI should ever be involved with something so critical, and demanding a mountain of evidence to prove why it is worthwhile before investing a penny or a second in it

“ChatGPT doesn’t require a wage,” and, before you know it, billions of people are out of work and everything costs 10000x your annual wage (when you were lucky enough to still have one).

How long until the workers revolt? How long have you gone without food?

This says you’re full of owls. So we doing a radical owlectomy or what?

pikachufacegravestone.jpeg

its not ready to take any role. It should not be doing anything but assiting. So yeah you can talk to a chat bot instead of filling out that checklist and the output might be useful to the doc while he then talks with you.

So the same tech that lonely incels use to make themselves feel important doesn’t make good doctors? Ya don’t say?

You know what else is a bad doctor? My axe!

... You don't say.

It's great at software development though /s

Remember that when software written by AI will soon replace all the devices doctors use daily.

How much of that is the chat bot itself versus humans just being horrible at self reporting symptoms?

That is why "bedside manner" is so important. Connect the dots and ask follow up questions for clarifications or just look at a person and assume they are wrong. Obviously there are some BIG problems with that (ask any black woman, for example) but... humans are horrible at reporting symptoms.

Which gets back to how "AI" is actually an incredible tool (especially in this case when it is mostly a human language interface to a search engine) but you still need domain experts in the loop to understand what questions to ask and whether the resulting answer makes any sense at all.

Yet, instead, people do the equivalent of just raw dogging whatever the first response on stack overflow is.

No shit. Got a weird pain in you elbow? Youve got brain cancer buddy!

It looks like the LLMs weren't trained for medical tasks. The study would be more interesting if it had been run on something built for the task.

This makes sense. However doctors aren't perfect either and one thing properly trained AI should excel at is helping doctors make rare diagnoses or determine additional testing for some diagnoses. I don't think it's quite there yet but probably close to being a tool a well trained doc could use as an adjunct to traditional inquiry. Certainly not something end users should be fiddling with with any sort of trust though. Much of doctor decision making happens based on experience - experience biases towards common diagnoses which usually works out because well, statistics, but it does lead to misdiagnosis of rare disorders. An Ai should be more objective about these.