7 ms·

ChatGPT 4 saved my dog’s life

181 points by dsr12 4y ago

gumballindie 4y ago
Finally, a tool to replace facebook “research” cringe.
davidkuennen 4y ago
Mind-blowing. Really let's one imagine the possibilities in the future or even now.
- izacus 4y ago
  In what way was this different from people Googling medical advice and then badgering their doctors/vets?
  - davidkuennen 4y ago
    In what way is driving a car different from riding a horse? Efficiency and accessibility.
    - izacus 4y ago
      True, it's amplifying Google results BS to incredible levels.
      - nwienert 4y ago
        Funny thing is Googling a very simple "dog anemia" suggests it in the first result. Which is unbelievably faster than pasting in a giant set of results and phrasing a question. I guess ChatGPT is the horse :P
      - speedgoose 4y ago
        In my experience on topics I know well, ChatGPT is pretty good at avoiding bullshit. A lot of garbage in but mostly high quality results out. A bit like the image generation AIs that are trained on tons of ugly pictures, understand the common concepts, and only output beautiful pictures thanks to the fewer beautiful pictures from the training datasets.
  - HeavyFeather 4y ago
    Googling requires the user to interpret the results; ChatGPT can interpret them. > badgering their doctors/vets You're saying it like being aware of possible diseases is a bad thing. One just has to avoid saying "you're wrong" to a doctor and instead just ask for a second opinion.
raincole 4y ago
It's incredible, but I think we're going to witness the first person who gets killed by GPT-4 in about 3~6 months. Someone is going to blindly follow GPT-4's medical advice and meet their end.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  No problem, as long as GPT-4's advice saves more people than it harms.
  - rvz 4y ago
    They said that about Telsa FSD and after many years, not many drivers trust fully trust it to drive without any human intervention, despite promising "robo-taxi level AI". One anecdote is not even close for this to be reliable for life and death advice, especially with the high risk of hallucination and sophistry. This is survivorship bias at its finest.
    - raincole 4y ago
      > not many drivers trust fully trust it to drive without any human intervention It's a very good thing. Especially regarding GPT-4. Better than people fully trusting it and following its advice.
      - rvz 4y ago
        That is my point. In the case for FSD, the driver must be attentive and behind the wheel at all times.
    - p-e-w 4y ago
      That's ironic, considering that in this case it was THE DOCTOR whose advice would have killed the patient, and ChatGPT who saved them. The pedestals that our society has put professionals on are going to start tumbling very soon now.
      - 4y ago
testHNac 4y ago
This is the right approach to using AI. Went to a Vet. After the treatment didn't work, asked AI. Considered AI's opinion. Went to another Vet for Opinion. Got Results. Problem arises when People will blindly follow the diagnosis by GPT. Got me thinking. The first Vet might not have considered the issue due to a blind spot in judgement. An interesting use of GPT for me will be to give it a scenario and try to come up with new ways of looking at the problem. A way to detect blindspots in my judgement.
- admissionsguy 4y ago
  I don’t think there is a need to invoke blindspots and such. Many doctors, let alone vets, are just dangerously incompetent and GPT is a godsend.
- zakkor1 4y ago
  Tweet author here. First vet was incompetent. Second vet was highly skilled and very professional, I am 100% confident they would have been able to place the correct diagnosis regardless. If we continued staying with the first vet without getting a second opinion, she definitely would have died. On the other hand, if the first vet had access to specialized AI medical diagnostics tools, she wouldn't have died. I think that's the key takeway here. I think it's also worth pointing out this was less about GPT placing a certain diagnosis, and more about it swaying me in the right direction (i.e. away from listening to bad doctor's advice, and towards looking for a second/opinion trying something else). When the first vet said "welp, don't know what else to do, we gave her the treatment and there's nothing else it can possibly be, so we're just going to monitor her and see how things go", I stayed up all night asking GP4 various things, and no matter which way I sliced it, it was obvious something didn't add up
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    People should be getting a 2nd opinion regardless. Too many people don’t shop around with their health care providers enough and the say things like “GPs are useless”, “physiotherapists are useless”. Some are bad, some burn out, some are over worked, just like all professions.
p-e-w 4y ago
This story is a great reminder why AIs don't need to perform at Nobel Laureate level in order to make almost all humans obsolete: Because almost all humans don't perform like Nobel Laureates either. ChatGPT isn't competing against the cutting edge of medical knowledge, but against the indifferent, overworked, incompetent individual professionals that are all that's available to most of us. No wonder it comes out on top.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  ChatGPT … Fixed Dog I think it will be a long while before that ellipsis is, well nothing.
- vasco 4y ago
  "Take some paracetamol and come back in two weeks" written in a piece of paper would be enough to replace most of my doctors (even if I already managed symptoms for 2 weeks before going). In the worst case they prescribed that for a brain tumour. So yeah I'll take google and ChatGPT and upload my MRIs there before I trust some random person that I can't even tell if they are good at their job. ChatGPT at least doesn't speak matter of factly and peer pressure me into doing whatever thing takes less time to get me out the door and the next person in.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    It'll be interesting to see how long the medical industry will manage to FUD people into being scared of taking their symptoms to an AI, considering that they have been treating patients like cattle to be stamped off essentially since forever. The bar of competence set by most doctors is so hilariously low that any smart person with a search engine has been able to outdo the typical GP for a while now. All the accumulated knowledge these professionals have is worthless if they don't take more than 3 minutes to look at the patient. Imagine if, as an engineering consultant, you took just 3 minutes in total for your customer, including the customer describing their problem. They would literally be better off just googling it instead. There's no reason to expect this to be different for doctors, and indeed it isn't.
extr 4y ago
I've been using ChatGPT as a health consultant for all sorts of things. If you've ever experienced health anxiety, you know a huge problem is Googling your symptoms and the top links immediately going to diagnoses like lymphoma or HIV. There is no sense of the a priori likelihood of anything. But ChatGPT is pretty measured, and though it includes tons of disclaimers about needing to see a real doctor, it's impossible to definitely say, etc etc, it's much better about returning the REAL most likely reason you have a headache (you're dehydrated) rather than you have brain cancer. Of course, you could argue this is lulling you in a false sense of security. But the same thing (arguably worse) happens when you go to a real doctor! Half the time they barely look at you and just kind of shrug off concerns/anxiety. Edit: I got curious and ran an experiment. Typically when you are anxiously googling you are worried about the worst case (even if it's not rational). Google: "headache brain tumor" First result, before links even, is a huge out-of-context info box from the Mayo Clinic on brain tumors that highlights the words "Or a brain tumor can cause swelling in the brain that increases pressure in the head and leads to a headache." Jesus Christ! ChatGPT 3.5: "I have a headache, could it be a brain tumor?" First two sentences: "A headache can have many different causes, and while a brain tumor is one possible cause, it is not the most common cause. Most headaches are not caused by brain tumors and are usually due to other factors such as tension, sinus issues, or migraine." It then goes on to list tumor-specific headaches symptoms (like changes in vision or hearing) and calls out to see a doctor if you're getting those. Which do you think is more likely to calm you down? Or is more legitimately helpful and going to provide good outcomes?
- gadtfly 4y ago
  > Googling your symptoms, the top links immediately go to diagnoses like lymphoma or HIV. There is no sense of the a priori likelihood of anything. An essay on this topic: "WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-...
- runsWphotons 4y ago
  yeah but if you google "differential diagnosis for anaemic dog" this comes right up. the first vet couldve just googled it.
i_love_cookies 4y ago
[dead]
ornornor 4y ago
https://nitter.net/peakcooper/status/1639716822680236032 https://nitter.net/peakcooper/status/1639716822680236032
kretaceous 4y ago
I shed a tear. It's not often you come across a story of end user tech saving lives, let alone a relatively nascent one. Such a strong girl. Go Sassy!
thunderbong 4y ago
Better readability - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1639716822680236032.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1639716822680236032.html
- saurik 4y ago
  The font size is so large as to be comical/annoying and the page is riddled with ads... if that's what "better readability" is these days, I think I'm going to stick with the supposedly-harder-to-read original source.
akokanka 4y ago
[dead]
geraneum 4y ago
When I search “different causes of anemia in dogs” in either Kagi or Google (with Ad-Block), the first response for me gives the same information That GPT-4 does.
namaria 4y ago
I see a story about information saving a life. ChatGPT is certainly a tool that can retrieve information. Are we gonna celebrate the millions of lives saved by books next?
- grugagag 4y ago
  ChatGPT is on a hype wave at the moment. Stories like these are going to become more and more irritating before the hype subsides.
- tim333 4y ago
  Books and literacy have already been celebrated.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Time to move on then I guess!
nwienert 4y ago
My first google - "dog anemia low platelet count increase wbc" - first result suggests the same, plus 3-4 more on the first page. I'm guessing about 1000x faster than using ChatGPT. I think the real story here is how vulnerable many are to hype, and maybe even more so, how many are willing to ignore the obvious to cash in on the attention. We saw it with crypto, now it's AI's turn. Honestly I can't tell which had more annoying grifters.
- zakkor1 4y ago
  The point is, you got the phrase you Googled ("low platelet count increase wbc") from GPT4. I had no idea what the test results meant or how to interpret them. I was trying to do SOMETHING to improve my dog's chances, and ChatGPT was #1 most accessible tool I could use for this. Sure, if you know exactly what you want to google for, you can google it. But that requires you to interpret all the information and piece together a theory, whereas with GPT I just stated all the facts and received accurate (in this case) info back
  - nwienert 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 4y ago
      > Sorry but "dog anemia" also suggests it on the first result, but enjoy gaining the cultish following you seek. Please don't be an asshole on HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Being right (assuming you are) actually makes it worse. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - geraneum 4y ago
    That’s not the case. After going to the first vet, you can search for causes of anemia in dogs without uploading test results or giving any further details and the first hit is as good as GPT’s. I have seen some good use cases for GPT but this one in particular (the Tweet) is not a good example.
paxys 4y ago
Very happy that things worked out for them in the end, but people should remember that for every good suggestion generated by ChatGPT there may be a hundred others that it has just hallucinated. The author did the right thing by using its response as a starting point to do further consultations and testing, but I suspect there will be more and more cases of patients barging into their doctor's office with printouts of ChatGPT results convinced that they know the right treatments, similar to what happens today with Google and WebMD. Or worse just trying the treatments themselves without any consultation at all.
HervalFreire 4y ago
So does this scenario prove that GPT4 is a stochastic parrot or that the entire medical field of doctors are stochastic parrots?
- number6 4y ago
  Aren't we all stochastic parrots?
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    If we are then AI should eventually replace us.
- tim333 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree/status/1639816606342676480 https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree/status/1639816606342676480
jillesvangurp 4y ago
I've been skimming lots of articles and threads on GPT and AI. What strikes as a bit repulsive is the overwhelming panicky tone, conservatism, moralism, finger waving, and outright luddism on display. So, nice to see something a bit more positive. Dog got sick, chat gpt 4 saves the day. Amazing. I'm more or less an optimist. My default attitude is that things will be fine even if they aren't perfect just right now. I enjoy utopian sci fi. I know intellectually it is a utopia and not realistic. But I still like to imagine how great humanity could be if we got rid of that before mentioned attitude. Chat GPT is the most concrete thing in my life time that gets us close to how people interacted with such classic AI characters as c3po, twiki (Buck rogers), kitt in Knight Rider, or the nameless "computer" in Star Trek. I grew up in the eighties (obviously). My first computer was a commodore 64, that wasn't quite that smart. All that went from being science fiction to being science fact in the last few months. We now have conversational AIs that we can discuss all sorts of topics with. Like C3PO it jumps to the wrong conclusions some times, can be wrong in very entertaining ways, and is scarily good when things go right. I had some debate with Bing as to what to eat and then debugged some code with chat gpt 3 and it pointed out some mistakes that I made. Is AI going to replace me in everything I do? No, I don't think so. If only because it is in my interest to find ways to keep myself busy. But I sure am going to be using it a lot to do what I do a little bit faster. Which means I get to do more interesting things. Sounds good to me. I like doing interesting things. GPT 4 apparently has the ability to use tools. Where GPT-3 struggles to do math, GPT-4 can use a calculator and learn to use other tools. This is going to be very disruptive for me. Because learning how to use all sorts of weird and obscure tools is a big part of what I need to do. Often what I do conceptually (I'm a startup CTO) is pretty easy to grasp. Except I then need to figure out a whole bunch of tools to get the work done. Which is actually somewhat tedious. I hate it when an idea pops in my head and I then have to grind at figuring out stupid tool issues for the next few days/weeks/months to get things done. I often don't have time for this so most of my brain farts don't get very far. I actually have to be very economical about what I pursue even or I won't get anything done at all. For most of the ideas I have I don't even have enough bandwidth to validate if they are even good ideas. This is frustrating to me. And fundamentally, this frustration is what drives creativity. You get stuck on some problem, grind away at it, and then you find a solution and your brain rewards you with a little endorphin rush. We're not very complicated. That incidentally is also the business model behind social media: AI driven endorphin rushes in the form of an addictive feed of stuff. And that AI is mind numbingly stupid in comparison. So, I don't see AI as a threat but as a massive enabler for me that I can delegate to, cross check ideas with, ask to provide me with some inspiration, explore new concepts with, etc. GPT-3 is already quite good in a limited way but from what I've read about GPT-4, I've seen nothing yet. And I'm sure we'll have GPT 5,6,7 and so on leap frog what is possible in a relatively short time frame. Not to mention the countless other companies that are working on competing AIs. So, yes, AI is going to change lots of things and I think that's great. Can't wait. Can I fast forward ten years or so?
abbefaria27 4y ago
The author just needed to get a second opinion. I showed this to a veterinarian I know, and she said this is pretty obvious from a quick glance at the bloodwork. In fact she's skeptical that the first vet didn't see it, and rather thinks there may have been some miscommunication. You can look up anemia in a reference and it lists the same differentials. Though according to her, ChatGPT didn't present them in the most likely order (e.g. babesiosis should be lower), and there are many other factors to consider. This is still very impressive for a computer program, but not as mind-blowing as I first thought when reading the thread. ChatGPT didn't find some obscure disease like in a medical TV show. Rather, it correctly read the low blood cell count, and pulled up the differentials for anemia from a reference book. On a side note, considering how often ChatGPT will lie with full confidence, personally I can't imagine using it for anything medically related.
- Tolaire 4y ago
  And yet, a dog is alive. When benchmarking AI vs. humans, it's important to take into account how garbage humans can be.

181 points by dsr12 4y ago

gumballindie 4y ago

Finally, a tool to replace facebook “research” cringe.

davidkuennen 4y ago

Mind-blowing. Really let's one imagine the possibilities in the future or even now.

izacus 4y ago
In what way was this different from people Googling medical advice and then badgering their doctors/vets?
- davidkuennen 4y ago
  In what way is driving a car different from riding a horse? Efficiency and accessibility.
  - izacus 4y ago
    True, it's amplifying Google results BS to incredible levels.
    - nwienert 4y ago
      Funny thing is Googling a very simple "dog anemia" suggests it in the first result. Which is unbelievably faster than pasting in a giant set of results and phrasing a question. I guess ChatGPT is the horse :P
    - speedgoose 4y ago
      In my experience on topics I know well, ChatGPT is pretty good at avoiding bullshit. A lot of garbage in but mostly high quality results out. A bit like the image generation AIs that are trained on tons of ugly pictures, understand the common concepts, and only output beautiful pictures thanks to the fewer beautiful pictures from the training datasets.
- HeavyFeather 4y ago
  Googling requires the user to interpret the results; ChatGPT can interpret them. > badgering their doctors/vets You're saying it like being aware of possible diseases is a bad thing. One just has to avoid saying "you're wrong" to a doctor and instead just ask for a second opinion.

raincole 4y ago

It's incredible, but I think we're going to witness the first person who gets killed by GPT-4 in about 3~6 months. Someone is going to blindly follow GPT-4's medical advice and meet their end.

p-e-w 4y ago
No problem, as long as GPT-4's advice saves more people than it harms.
- rvz 4y ago
  They said that about Telsa FSD and after many years, not many drivers trust fully trust it to drive without any human intervention, despite promising "robo-taxi level AI". One anecdote is not even close for this to be reliable for life and death advice, especially with the high risk of hallucination and sophistry. This is survivorship bias at its finest.
  - raincole 4y ago
    > not many drivers trust fully trust it to drive without any human intervention It's a very good thing. Especially regarding GPT-4. Better than people fully trusting it and following its advice.
    - rvz 4y ago
      That is my point. In the case for FSD, the driver must be attentive and behind the wheel at all times.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    That's ironic, considering that in this case it was THE DOCTOR whose advice would have killed the patient, and ChatGPT who saved them. The pedestals that our society has put professionals on are going to start tumbling very soon now.
    - 4y ago

testHNac 4y ago

This is the right approach to using AI. Went to a Vet. After the treatment didn't work, asked AI. Considered AI's opinion. Went to another Vet for Opinion. Got Results. Problem arises when People will blindly follow the diagnosis by GPT. Got me thinking. The first Vet might not have considered the issue due to a blind spot in judgement. An interesting use of GPT for me will be to give it a scenario and try to come up with new ways of looking at the problem. A way to detect blindspots in my judgement.

admissionsguy 4y ago
I don’t think there is a need to invoke blindspots and such. Many doctors, let alone vets, are just dangerously incompetent and GPT is a godsend.
zakkor1 4y ago
Tweet author here. First vet was incompetent. Second vet was highly skilled and very professional, I am 100% confident they would have been able to place the correct diagnosis regardless. If we continued staying with the first vet without getting a second opinion, she definitely would have died. On the other hand, if the first vet had access to specialized AI medical diagnostics tools, she wouldn't have died. I think that's the key takeway here. I think it's also worth pointing out this was less about GPT placing a certain diagnosis, and more about it swaying me in the right direction (i.e. away from listening to bad doctor's advice, and towards looking for a second/opinion trying something else). When the first vet said "welp, don't know what else to do, we gave her the treatment and there's nothing else it can possibly be, so we're just going to monitor her and see how things go", I stayed up all night asking GP4 various things, and no matter which way I sliced it, it was obvious something didn't add up
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  People should be getting a 2nd opinion regardless. Too many people don’t shop around with their health care providers enough and the say things like “GPs are useless”, “physiotherapists are useless”. Some are bad, some burn out, some are over worked, just like all professions.

p-e-w 4y ago

This story is a great reminder why AIs don't need to perform at Nobel Laureate level in order to make almost all humans obsolete: Because almost all humans don't perform like Nobel Laureates either. ChatGPT isn't competing against the cutting edge of medical knowledge, but against the indifferent, overworked, incompetent individual professionals that are all that's available to most of us. No wonder it comes out on top.

quickthrower2 4y ago
ChatGPT … Fixed Dog I think it will be a long while before that ellipsis is, well nothing.
vasco 4y ago
"Take some paracetamol and come back in two weeks" written in a piece of paper would be enough to replace most of my doctors (even if I already managed symptoms for 2 weeks before going). In the worst case they prescribed that for a brain tumour. So yeah I'll take google and ChatGPT and upload my MRIs there before I trust some random person that I can't even tell if they are good at their job. ChatGPT at least doesn't speak matter of factly and peer pressure me into doing whatever thing takes less time to get me out the door and the next person in.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  It'll be interesting to see how long the medical industry will manage to FUD people into being scared of taking their symptoms to an AI, considering that they have been treating patients like cattle to be stamped off essentially since forever. The bar of competence set by most doctors is so hilariously low that any smart person with a search engine has been able to outdo the typical GP for a while now. All the accumulated knowledge these professionals have is worthless if they don't take more than 3 minutes to look at the patient. Imagine if, as an engineering consultant, you took just 3 minutes in total for your customer, including the customer describing their problem. They would literally be better off just googling it instead. There's no reason to expect this to be different for doctors, and indeed it isn't.

extr 4y ago

I've been using ChatGPT as a health consultant for all sorts of things. If you've ever experienced health anxiety, you know a huge problem is Googling your symptoms and the top links immediately going to diagnoses like lymphoma or HIV. There is no sense of the a priori likelihood of anything. But ChatGPT is pretty measured, and though it includes tons of disclaimers about needing to see a real doctor, it's impossible to definitely say, etc etc, it's much better about returning the REAL most likely reason you have a headache (you're dehydrated) rather than you have brain cancer. Of course, you could argue this is lulling you in a false sense of security. But the same thing (arguably worse) happens when you go to a real doctor! Half the time they barely look at you and just kind of shrug off concerns/anxiety. Edit: I got curious and ran an experiment. Typically when you are anxiously googling you are worried about the worst case (even if it's not rational). Google: "headache brain tumor" First result, before links even, is a huge out-of-context info box from the Mayo Clinic on brain tumors that highlights the words "Or a brain tumor can cause swelling in the brain that increases pressure in the head and leads to a headache." Jesus Christ! ChatGPT 3.5: "I have a headache, could it be a brain tumor?" First two sentences: "A headache can have many different causes, and while a brain tumor is one possible cause, it is not the most common cause. Most headaches are not caused by brain tumors and are usually due to other factors such as tension, sinus issues, or migraine." It then goes on to list tumor-specific headaches symptoms (like changes in vision or hearing) and calls out to see a doctor if you're getting those. Which do you think is more likely to calm you down? Or is more legitimately helpful and going to provide good outcomes?

gadtfly 4y ago
> Googling your symptoms, the top links immediately go to diagnoses like lymphoma or HIV. There is no sense of the a priori likelihood of anything. An essay on this topic: "WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-...
runsWphotons 4y ago
yeah but if you google "differential diagnosis for anaemic dog" this comes right up. the first vet couldve just googled it.

i_love_cookies 4y ago

[dead]

ornornor 4y ago

https://nitter.net/peakcooper/status/1639716822680236032 https://nitter.net/peakcooper/status/1639716822680236032

kretaceous 4y ago

I shed a tear. It's not often you come across a story of end user tech saving lives, let alone a relatively nascent one. Such a strong girl. Go Sassy!

thunderbong 4y ago

Better readability - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1639716822680236032.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1639716822680236032.html

saurik 4y ago
The font size is so large as to be comical/annoying and the page is riddled with ads... if that's what "better readability" is these days, I think I'm going to stick with the supposedly-harder-to-read original source.

akokanka 4y ago

[dead]

geraneum 4y ago

When I search “different causes of anemia in dogs” in either Kagi or Google (with Ad-Block), the first response for me gives the same information That GPT-4 does.

namaria 4y ago

I see a story about information saving a life. ChatGPT is certainly a tool that can retrieve information. Are we gonna celebrate the millions of lives saved by books next?

grugagag 4y ago
ChatGPT is on a hype wave at the moment. Stories like these are going to become more and more irritating before the hype subsides.
tim333 4y ago
Books and literacy have already been celebrated.
- namaria 4y ago
  Time to move on then I guess!

nwienert 4y ago

My first google - "dog anemia low platelet count increase wbc" - first result suggests the same, plus 3-4 more on the first page. I'm guessing about 1000x faster than using ChatGPT. I think the real story here is how vulnerable many are to hype, and maybe even more so, how many are willing to ignore the obvious to cash in on the attention. We saw it with crypto, now it's AI's turn. Honestly I can't tell which had more annoying grifters.

zakkor1 4y ago
The point is, you got the phrase you Googled ("low platelet count increase wbc") from GPT4. I had no idea what the test results meant or how to interpret them. I was trying to do SOMETHING to improve my dog's chances, and ChatGPT was #1 most accessible tool I could use for this. Sure, if you know exactly what you want to google for, you can google it. But that requires you to interpret all the information and piece together a theory, whereas with GPT I just stated all the facts and received accurate (in this case) info back
- nwienert 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    > Sorry but "dog anemia" also suggests it on the first result, but enjoy gaining the cultish following you seek. Please don't be an asshole on HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Being right (assuming you are) actually makes it worse. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- geraneum 4y ago
  That’s not the case. After going to the first vet, you can search for causes of anemia in dogs without uploading test results or giving any further details and the first hit is as good as GPT’s. I have seen some good use cases for GPT but this one in particular (the Tweet) is not a good example.

paxys 4y ago

Very happy that things worked out for them in the end, but people should remember that for every good suggestion generated by ChatGPT there may be a hundred others that it has just hallucinated. The author did the right thing by using its response as a starting point to do further consultations and testing, but I suspect there will be more and more cases of patients barging into their doctor's office with printouts of ChatGPT results convinced that they know the right treatments, similar to what happens today with Google and WebMD. Or worse just trying the treatments themselves without any consultation at all.

HervalFreire 4y ago

So does this scenario prove that GPT4 is a stochastic parrot or that the entire medical field of doctors are stochastic parrots?

number6 4y ago
Aren't we all stochastic parrots?
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  If we are then AI should eventually replace us.
tim333 4y ago
https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree/status/1639816606342676480 https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree/status/1639816606342676480

jillesvangurp 4y ago

I've been skimming lots of articles and threads on GPT and AI. What strikes as a bit repulsive is the overwhelming panicky tone, conservatism, moralism, finger waving, and outright luddism on display. So, nice to see something a bit more positive. Dog got sick, chat gpt 4 saves the day. Amazing. I'm more or less an optimist. My default attitude is that things will be fine even if they aren't perfect just right now. I enjoy utopian sci fi. I know intellectually it is a utopia and not realistic. But I still like to imagine how great humanity could be if we got rid of that before mentioned attitude. Chat GPT is the most concrete thing in my life time that gets us close to how people interacted with such classic AI characters as c3po, twiki (Buck rogers), kitt in Knight Rider, or the nameless "computer" in Star Trek. I grew up in the eighties (obviously). My first computer was a commodore 64, that wasn't quite that smart. All that went from being science fiction to being science fact in the last few months. We now have conversational AIs that we can discuss all sorts of topics with. Like C3PO it jumps to the wrong conclusions some times, can be wrong in very entertaining ways, and is scarily good when things go right. I had some debate with Bing as to what to eat and then debugged some code with chat gpt 3 and it pointed out some mistakes that I made. Is AI going to replace me in everything I do? No, I don't think so. If only because it is in my interest to find ways to keep myself busy. But I sure am going to be using it a lot to do what I do a little bit faster. Which means I get to do more interesting things. Sounds good to me. I like doing interesting things. GPT 4 apparently has the ability to use tools. Where GPT-3 struggles to do math, GPT-4 can use a calculator and learn to use other tools. This is going to be very disruptive for me. Because learning how to use all sorts of weird and obscure tools is a big part of what I need to do. Often what I do conceptually (I'm a startup CTO) is pretty easy to grasp. Except I then need to figure out a whole bunch of tools to get the work done. Which is actually somewhat tedious. I hate it when an idea pops in my head and I then have to grind at figuring out stupid tool issues for the next few days/weeks/months to get things done. I often don't have time for this so most of my brain farts don't get very far. I actually have to be very economical about what I pursue even or I won't get anything done at all. For most of the ideas I have I don't even have enough bandwidth to validate if they are even good ideas. This is frustrating to me. And fundamentally, this frustration is what drives creativity. You get stuck on some problem, grind away at it, and then you find a solution and your brain rewards you with a little endorphin rush. We're not very complicated. That incidentally is also the business model behind social media: AI driven endorphin rushes in the form of an addictive feed of stuff. And that AI is mind numbingly stupid in comparison. So, I don't see AI as a threat but as a massive enabler for me that I can delegate to, cross check ideas with, ask to provide me with some inspiration, explore new concepts with, etc. GPT-3 is already quite good in a limited way but from what I've read about GPT-4, I've seen nothing yet. And I'm sure we'll have GPT 5,6,7 and so on leap frog what is possible in a relatively short time frame. Not to mention the countless other companies that are working on competing AIs. So, yes, AI is going to change lots of things and I think that's great. Can't wait. Can I fast forward ten years or so?

abbefaria27 4y ago

The author just needed to get a second opinion. I showed this to a veterinarian I know, and she said this is pretty obvious from a quick glance at the bloodwork. In fact she's skeptical that the first vet didn't see it, and rather thinks there may have been some miscommunication. You can look up anemia in a reference and it lists the same differentials. Though according to her, ChatGPT didn't present them in the most likely order (e.g. babesiosis should be lower), and there are many other factors to consider. This is still very impressive for a computer program, but not as mind-blowing as I first thought when reading the thread. ChatGPT didn't find some obscure disease like in a medical TV show. Rather, it correctly read the low blood cell count, and pulled up the differentials for anemia from a reference book. On a side note, considering how often ChatGPT will lie with full confidence, personally I can't imagine using it for anything medically related.

Tolaire 4y ago
And yet, a dog is alive. When benchmarking AI vs. humans, it's important to take into account how garbage humans can be.