4 ms·

Google is suggesting this should be used in poor countries without enough doctors because they know it is (or essentially will be, after the tidal wave of malpr

Google is suggesting this should be used in poor countries without enough doctors because they know it is (or essentially will be, after the tidal wave of malpractice suits happens) illegal in the US.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Perfect is the enemy of good.
- swalling 3y ago
  Tell that to someone when their kid dies because some chatbot hallucinated the wrong diagnosis or treatment.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jstummbillig 3y ago
    Let's not do that (but still keep in mind, that it is true). An individuals understandable inability to deal with statistical truth in times of personal hardship should not stand in the way of the best medical care, statistically.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    And…if they didn’t have access to a doctor anyways? This sounds like a huge improvement over traditional non-medicine that would be used instead.
  - sagarm 3y ago
    Lots of people simply don't get care due to the cost.
  - amf12 3y ago
    > Tell that to someone when their kid dies because some chatbot hallucinated the wrong diagnosis or treatment. MedPalm seems to be accessible only to healthcare facilities. If the chatbot hallucinated the wrong diagnosis or treatment, the doctor will still be liable.
- oldgradstudent 3y ago
  It's more like barely tolerable is the enemy of complete crap.
- cmiles74 3y ago
  Real solutions are the enemy of random bullshit. A chatbot that we know will misdiagnose is of no use to anyone.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    And there it is. You aren’t worried it will make an error, you believe it will always be wrong. Since doctors misdiagnose all the time anyways, just claiming that it might misdiagnose wouldn’t be strong enough to disavow it (since it almost certainly will misdiagnose at least as much as a human doctor).
    - cmiles74 3y ago
      This idea that because a human is sometimes wrong, it's okay for the chatbot to be wrong is one I find to be dangerous and unhelpful. The fact that people are fallible shouldn't encourage us to choose solutions with a high or unpredictable error rate. Some failures have a greater cost (i.e. launching a rocket) than others (delivering a package). Does the chatbot misdiagnose less than a doctor? When the chatbot does misdiagnose, is it in manner similar to a doctor? In the same way that AI generated images always had weird and creepy fingers, does this chatbot consistently misdiagnose the common cold as brain cancer? IMHO, without some real data, we're simply experimenting on people. That is wholly immoral. After some contradictory information on error rates and failure modes, a Google employee is quoted in the article: 'Corrado said that while he wouldn’t want it to be a part of his own family’s “healthcare journey,” he believes Med-PaLM 2 “takes the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expands them by 10-fold.”' Yikes! 10-fold expansion, excluding any interaction with people this person really cares about. Let us remember that this is a 10x times increase over the current "places where chatbot are beneficial in healthcare", that is to say zero.
amf12 3y ago
How is it illegal in the US? For one, it seems that it does conform to HIPPA. As per lawsuits, if the doctor is using it, they can't claim the chat bot gave them incorrect information - they should know better.
h1fra 3y ago
Double penalties. You are poor so you don't get good care and you also get to be a cobaye for a tech that can randomly (wrongly) guess your health problems.
- greenyoda 3y ago
  Note: In English, "cobaye" (French) is "guinea pig". (Similarly used in English as an example of an animal used in lab testing.)
CrampusDestrus 3y ago
Devil's advocate: most health problems in developing nations are the basic stuff we solved 100 years ago in the west. An AI that can detect when to give someone a dewormer or some vitamines or something else without occupying a doctor could be very helpful
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  Not if the ai is hallucinating. Imagine if your doctor was extremely knowledgeable, but extremely high on acid every day and prone to confidently lying to you
  - CrampusDestrus 3y ago
    Do you know how it works? If not then what's the point of this reply?
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    What are the odds that 5 doctors will do that? Furthermore, what are the odds that an ensemble of 100 models whose output is ranked / voted / etc will be wrong? What if we used LLMs to guide the search and ask questions / order and rank exams and analyses? This brings us to the bitter lesson, we can scale LLMs and compute far far far better than we can scale humans. As long as we can use compute to scale search and learning from data, we will keep making progress. Chess was unsolvable, Go was unsolvable, Starcraft was unsolvable. We will get there.
    - barbariangrunge 3y ago
      We’re not discussing a long term thing. We’re discussing a business today using todays tech
- nradov 3y ago
  Diagnosis is usually the easiest part of treating such conditions. The problems are more in lack of medical supplies, facilities, and personnel to administer treatment.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

Perfect is the enemy of good.

swalling 3y ago
Tell that to someone when their kid dies because some chatbot hallucinated the wrong diagnosis or treatment.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jstummbillig 3y ago
  Let's not do that (but still keep in mind, that it is true). An individuals understandable inability to deal with statistical truth in times of personal hardship should not stand in the way of the best medical care, statistically.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  And…if they didn’t have access to a doctor anyways? This sounds like a huge improvement over traditional non-medicine that would be used instead.
- sagarm 3y ago
  Lots of people simply don't get care due to the cost.
- amf12 3y ago
  > Tell that to someone when their kid dies because some chatbot hallucinated the wrong diagnosis or treatment. MedPalm seems to be accessible only to healthcare facilities. If the chatbot hallucinated the wrong diagnosis or treatment, the doctor will still be liable.
oldgradstudent 3y ago
It's more like barely tolerable is the enemy of complete crap.
cmiles74 3y ago
Real solutions are the enemy of random bullshit. A chatbot that we know will misdiagnose is of no use to anyone.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  And there it is. You aren’t worried it will make an error, you believe it will always be wrong. Since doctors misdiagnose all the time anyways, just claiming that it might misdiagnose wouldn’t be strong enough to disavow it (since it almost certainly will misdiagnose at least as much as a human doctor).
  - cmiles74 3y ago
    This idea that because a human is sometimes wrong, it's okay for the chatbot to be wrong is one I find to be dangerous and unhelpful. The fact that people are fallible shouldn't encourage us to choose solutions with a high or unpredictable error rate. Some failures have a greater cost (i.e. launching a rocket) than others (delivering a package). Does the chatbot misdiagnose less than a doctor? When the chatbot does misdiagnose, is it in manner similar to a doctor? In the same way that AI generated images always had weird and creepy fingers, does this chatbot consistently misdiagnose the common cold as brain cancer? IMHO, without some real data, we're simply experimenting on people. That is wholly immoral. After some contradictory information on error rates and failure modes, a Google employee is quoted in the article: 'Corrado said that while he wouldn’t want it to be a part of his own family’s “healthcare journey,” he believes Med-PaLM 2 “takes the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expands them by 10-fold.”' Yikes! 10-fold expansion, excluding any interaction with people this person really cares about. Let us remember that this is a 10x times increase over the current "places where chatbot are beneficial in healthcare", that is to say zero.

amf12 3y ago

How is it illegal in the US? For one, it seems that it does conform to HIPPA. As per lawsuits, if the doctor is using it, they can't claim the chat bot gave them incorrect information - they should know better.

h1fra 3y ago

Double penalties. You are poor so you don't get good care and you also get to be a cobaye for a tech that can randomly (wrongly) guess your health problems.

greenyoda 3y ago
Note: In English, "cobaye" (French) is "guinea pig". (Similarly used in English as an example of an animal used in lab testing.)

CrampusDestrus 3y ago

Devil's advocate: most health problems in developing nations are the basic stuff we solved 100 years ago in the west. An AI that can detect when to give someone a dewormer or some vitamines or something else without occupying a doctor could be very helpful

barbariangrunge 3y ago
Not if the ai is hallucinating. Imagine if your doctor was extremely knowledgeable, but extremely high on acid every day and prone to confidently lying to you
- CrampusDestrus 3y ago
  Do you know how it works? If not then what's the point of this reply?
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  What are the odds that 5 doctors will do that? Furthermore, what are the odds that an ensemble of 100 models whose output is ranked / voted / etc will be wrong? What if we used LLMs to guide the search and ask questions / order and rank exams and analyses? This brings us to the bitter lesson, we can scale LLMs and compute far far far better than we can scale humans. As long as we can use compute to scale search and learning from data, we will keep making progress. Chess was unsolvable, Go was unsolvable, Starcraft was unsolvable. We will get there.
  - barbariangrunge 3y ago
    We’re not discussing a long term thing. We’re discussing a business today using todays tech
nradov 3y ago
Diagnosis is usually the easiest part of treating such conditions. The problems are more in lack of medical supplies, facilities, and personnel to administer treatment.