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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.

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.
- leobg 4y ago
  Question is, would an incompetent, overworked person take the time and humility to actually ask the AI? You did, because you cared. With incompetent or overworked people, the problem is often that they just don’t care, or have no capacity to care. Being able to ask the proper question is almost always 80% of the solution. In your case, the first vet, it seems to me, wasn’t even asking the question.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Indeed, this is a call to fix the process by requiring or strongly encouraging consulting the big electronic brain. Historically (1800s), doctors did not feel the need to wash their hands between patients, leading to poor outcomes and death. It had to be mandated, leading to improved outcomes. Same thing. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashing-once-controversial-medical-advice https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashi...
p-e-w 4y ago
> Problem arises when People will blindly follow the diagnosis by GPT. In this case, the problem would have been blindly following the doctor's advice – not ChatGPT's. The medical professional was wrong. Lethally wrong. If there is a lesson here about the trustworthiness of AI, then there is also a lesson about the trustworthiness of the average doctor.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  In the future we will need an *ist word for when someone unreasonably privileges the opinion of a human over the output of an equally competent (or better) AI.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    We need that word now, considering how GPT-4 is performing at major exams compared to human professionals. GPT-4 is better than the average human professional today. This isn't some hypothetical future we are talking about.
    - NobleLie 4y ago
      Better than the average human professional...at taking tests. Not better at being a useful doctor able to intake a patient and get to the bottom of an unspecified disease. Both doctors and AI are generally poor at doctoring. Only a small fraction of doctors are good at being doctors. No LLM is good at being a doctor.
      - yencabulator 4y ago
        At a subset of tests the GPT was most suitable for.

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.
leobg 4y ago
Question is, would an incompetent, overworked person take the time and humility to actually ask the AI? You did, because you cared. With incompetent or overworked people, the problem is often that they just don’t care, or have no capacity to care. Being able to ask the proper question is almost always 80% of the solution. In your case, the first vet, it seems to me, wasn’t even asking the question.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Indeed, this is a call to fix the process by requiring or strongly encouraging consulting the big electronic brain. Historically (1800s), doctors did not feel the need to wash their hands between patients, leading to poor outcomes and death. It had to be mandated, leading to improved outcomes. Same thing. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashing-once-controversial-medical-advice https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashi...

p-e-w 4y ago

> Problem arises when People will blindly follow the diagnosis by GPT. In this case, the problem would have been blindly following the doctor's advice – not ChatGPT's. The medical professional was wrong. Lethally wrong. If there is a lesson here about the trustworthiness of AI, then there is also a lesson about the trustworthiness of the average doctor.

hackerlight 4y ago
In the future we will need an *ist word for when someone unreasonably privileges the opinion of a human over the output of an equally competent (or better) AI.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  We need that word now, considering how GPT-4 is performing at major exams compared to human professionals. GPT-4 is better than the average human professional today. This isn't some hypothetical future we are talking about.
  - NobleLie 4y ago
    Better than the average human professional...at taking tests. Not better at being a useful doctor able to intake a patient and get to the bottom of an unspecified disease. Both doctors and AI are generally poor at doctoring. Only a small fraction of doctors are good at being doctors. No LLM is good at being a doctor.
    - yencabulator 4y ago
      At a subset of tests the GPT was most suitable for.