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There is going to be a lot of this happening. With lawyers, doctors, journalists, all kinds of expensive experts and consultants are going to face some competit

There is going to be a lot of this happening. With lawyers, doctors, journalists, all kinds of expensive experts and consultants are going to face some competition from tools like this used by their customers to reduce their dependence on expensive experts or at least to get a second opinion; or even a first opinion. Whether that's misguided or not is not the question. The only question is how good/valuable the AI advice is going to be. Initially, you might expect lots of issues with this. Or at least areas where it under performs or is not optimal. But it's already showing plenty of potential and it's only going to improve from here. It's natural for experts to feel threatened by this but not a very productive attitude long term. It would be prudent for them to embrace this, or at least acknowledge this, and integrate it in their work process so they can earn their money in the areas where these tools still fall short by focusing less on the boring task of doing very routine cases and more on the less routine cases. Same with doctors. Whether they like it or not, patients are going to show up having used these tools and having a diagnosis ready. Or second guessing the diagnosis they get from their doctor. When the AI diagnosis is clearly wrong, that's a problem of course (and a liability issue potentially). But there are going to be a lot of cases where AI is going to suggest some sane things or even better things. And of course no doctor is perfect. I know of a lot of cases where people shop around to get second opinions. Reason: some doctors get it wrong or are not necessarily up to speed with the latest research. And of course some people can't really afford medical help. That's sad but a real issue. Instead of banning these tools, I expect a few years from now, doctors, lawyers, etc. will use tools like this to speed up their work, dig through lots of information they never read, and do their work more efficiently. I expect some hospitals and insurers will start insisting on these tools being used pretty soon actually. There's a cost argument that less time should be wasted on routine stuff and there's a quality argument as well. AIs should be referring patients to doctors as needed but handle routine cases without human intervention or at least prepare most of the work for final approval. Same with lawyers. They could write a lot of legalese manually. Or they could just do a quick check on the generated letters and documents. They bill per hour of course but they'll be competing with lawyers billing less hours for the same result.

dogleash 4y ago
>There is going to be a lot of this happening. With lawyers, doctors, journalists, all kinds of expensive experts and consultants are going to face some competition from tools like this used by their customers to reduce their dependence on expensive experts or at least to get a second opinion; or even a first opinion. What are you on about? This has been ongoing for decades. You're talking down to hypothetical doctors as if doctors don't already deal with the phenomenon of people self-diagnosing from the internet. We as humanity already know the benefits and drawbacks of Dr. Google. The only thing AI does that search engines don't, is it takes the pile of links a search engine would find and synthesizes it into a tailored piece of text designed to sound topical and authoritative. And delivers it to people who already believe too much of the shit they read on the internet.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Nonsense. I know a few GPs, they sure aren't using anything fancy on their laptops. They might google a bit at best but not on their locked down work laptop full of medical files and privacy sensitive data. And never while patients are looking. Most doctors I know use computers mostly for administrative stuff. Lawyers are actually worse. Lots of paper based administration. Patent lawyers use expensive search systems that are hard to use and query. But even that is pretty unintelligent and that's actually by design. They want to screen everything manually. I build search engines for a living, either group could benefit massively from even a simple one. The introduction of AI to this space has not happened yet. The little bit of experimentation that has happened with analyzing MRI scans, expert systems, etc. has of course had a limited impact. But most doctors operate without any of that. I think you are overestimating what search engines do, and underestimating what AI can do. Not in the distant future but right now.
- rafaelero 4y ago
  Google's AI can actually pass the medical bar test and offer diagnosis almost as accurate as clinicians'. That seems very, very different from a search engine.

dogleash 4y ago

>There is going to be a lot of this happening. With lawyers, doctors, journalists, all kinds of expensive experts and consultants are going to face some competition from tools like this used by their customers to reduce their dependence on expensive experts or at least to get a second opinion; or even a first opinion. What are you on about? This has been ongoing for decades. You're talking down to hypothetical doctors as if doctors don't already deal with the phenomenon of people self-diagnosing from the internet. We as humanity already know the benefits and drawbacks of Dr. Google. The only thing AI does that search engines don't, is it takes the pile of links a search engine would find and synthesizes it into a tailored piece of text designed to sound topical and authoritative. And delivers it to people who already believe too much of the shit they read on the internet.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
Nonsense. I know a few GPs, they sure aren't using anything fancy on their laptops. They might google a bit at best but not on their locked down work laptop full of medical files and privacy sensitive data. And never while patients are looking. Most doctors I know use computers mostly for administrative stuff. Lawyers are actually worse. Lots of paper based administration. Patent lawyers use expensive search systems that are hard to use and query. But even that is pretty unintelligent and that's actually by design. They want to screen everything manually. I build search engines for a living, either group could benefit massively from even a simple one. The introduction of AI to this space has not happened yet. The little bit of experimentation that has happened with analyzing MRI scans, expert systems, etc. has of course had a limited impact. But most doctors operate without any of that. I think you are overestimating what search engines do, and underestimating what AI can do. Not in the distant future but right now.
rafaelero 4y ago
Google's AI can actually pass the medical bar test and offer diagnosis almost as accurate as clinicians'. That seems very, very different from a search engine.