4 ms·

Kind of fascinating that the benefit here is not so much artificial intelligence as artificial empathy.

by sfink 3y ago

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
"here's a squeeze ball. go sit outside and squeeze it."
tshadley 3y ago
All cynicism aside, there's vastly more in the collective writings of humans on empathy than medicine.
- version_five 3y ago
  See my sibling comment just posted, I don't belive that's relevant. You can always screw up facts, it's a high bar. A loosely constrained example of an empathetic speech much easier. Despite the fact that medicine deals in facts (and this would hold true for an even more black and white discipline) so all you need in principle to learn from are a few examples, while empathy is much more subtle and would require a representation to be learned from many varied examples.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    > the fact that medicine deals in facts medicine benefits from facts, but is largely based on experienced, expert opinion
    - riwsky 3y ago
      And experience is the practical contact with and observation of facts, over an extended period. Most English dictionaries explicitly separate out “formal judgment by an expert” as a distinct meaning for “opinion” from the more common meaning of personal subjective no-facts-needed belief.
Nition 3y ago
I suppose really that's one of the big benefits of LLMs for everything. They're a friend who always has the time and willingness to try and help.
version_five 3y ago
ML models in general are not great when tasked with rigid stuff. Stable diffusion can make a cool picture, but getting it to make exactly the picture you had in mind is mostly impossible. This is actually a great use case in the sense that the requirements are flexible, it just has to be something empathetic and directionally related. That bar is so much lower than a trustworthy diagnosis or even a document lookup, either of which can be right or wrong. When what you need is "an example of x", this technology is great.
msla 3y ago
So much for hyper-advanced robots knowing pi to a million places but not being able to process this thing you call "love". They've even got this thing we call "bullshit" down pat.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mutant_glofish 3y ago
> Kind of fascinating that the benefit here is not so much artificial intelligence as artificial empathy. In their book "The Elephant in the Brain", Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson argue that a large subset of health care is already something like that: conspicuous caring with little benefits other than social signaling and feeling that one's being care for. [1] [1]: https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/notes-on-elephant-in-the-brain https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/notes-on-elepha...

Kind of fascinating that the benefit here is not so much artificial intelligence as artificial empathy.

by sfink 3y ago

Kind of fascinating that the benefit here is not so much artificial intelligence as artificial empathy.

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago

"here's a squeeze ball. go sit outside and squeeze it."

tshadley 3y ago

All cynicism aside, there's vastly more in the collective writings of humans on empathy than medicine.

version_five 3y ago
See my sibling comment just posted, I don't belive that's relevant. You can always screw up facts, it's a high bar. A loosely constrained example of an empathetic speech much easier. Despite the fact that medicine deals in facts (and this would hold true for an even more black and white discipline) so all you need in principle to learn from are a few examples, while empathy is much more subtle and would require a representation to be learned from many varied examples.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  > the fact that medicine deals in facts medicine benefits from facts, but is largely based on experienced, expert opinion
  - riwsky 3y ago
    And experience is the practical contact with and observation of facts, over an extended period. Most English dictionaries explicitly separate out “formal judgment by an expert” as a distinct meaning for “opinion” from the more common meaning of personal subjective no-facts-needed belief.

Nition 3y ago

I suppose really that's one of the big benefits of LLMs for everything. They're a friend who always has the time and willingness to try and help.

version_five 3y ago

ML models in general are not great when tasked with rigid stuff. Stable diffusion can make a cool picture, but getting it to make exactly the picture you had in mind is mostly impossible. This is actually a great use case in the sense that the requirements are flexible, it just has to be something empathetic and directionally related. That bar is so much lower than a trustworthy diagnosis or even a document lookup, either of which can be right or wrong. When what you need is "an example of x", this technology is great.

msla 3y ago

So much for hyper-advanced robots knowing pi to a million places but not being able to process this thing you call "love". They've even got this thing we call "bullshit" down pat.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mutant_glofish 3y ago

> Kind of fascinating that the benefit here is not so much artificial intelligence as artificial empathy. In their book "The Elephant in the Brain", Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson argue that a large subset of health care is already something like that: conspicuous caring with little benefits other than social signaling and feeling that one's being care for. [1] [1]: https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/notes-on-elephant-in-the-brain https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/notes-on-elepha...