5 ms·

A doctor is a lot more than just a black box taking the patients' descriptions and measurements, and running regressions on them. Doctors can touch, feel, under

A doctor is a lot more than just a black box taking the patients' descriptions and measurements, and running regressions on them. Doctors can touch, feel, understand, comfort in ways that our sensors or tensors (hah) can't. Same applies for a teacher too, in various other aspects. Reducing important professions into statistical models is exactly the kind of crappification that the author's talking about. The logical conclusion of perfect sensors and tensors is not here, and the lacking substitutes along the way will be profit-driven, not solution-driven.

Jack000 3y ago
I didn't say they would be better. Most people on earth lack any access to healthcare at all. https://shorturl.at/joA23 https://shorturl.at/joA23
infecto 3y ago
Unfortunately most doctors don’t have the time to be that hands on and at the end of the day are just taking your symptoms and comparing it to their flesh database of illness. There is a lot of value from just having help diagnose/triage people with illness. Certainly not a replacement but definitely a complement to get access to healthcare to more.
dagw 3y ago
Doctors can touch, feel, understand... Sure they can, but many don't either because of lack of time, or quite frankly, because many doctors are bad at their job. And even in the best case scenario we will never be able to provide doctors to 100% of the population. For many people the choice won't be AI or a (free) caring, passionate doctor who has time to understand you and answer your questions, it's AI or nothing. Same with teaching. A lot of people simply don't have access to teachers, and if even the ones that do, might not have teachers that have the time and knowledge to actually teach what they want to learn.
- krapp 3y ago
  This is an argument in favor of more human doctors and teachers, not replacing doctors and teachers with software.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    By itself it's an argument for both; the argument for "we can't have more doctors" is "we want some of those people to do other things besides doctoring".
  - dagw 3y ago
    The richest countries in the world cannot even produce enough competent doctors and teachers to fill their current needs. A world that produces enough skilled human doctors to meet everyones needs is even more science fiction than a world with skilled AI doctors.
    - krapp 3y ago
      The richest countries in the world choose not to produce enough competent doctors because of capitalist incentives, not because it's actually impossible.
      - check89 3y ago
        What do you mean?
    - zimpenfish 3y ago
      Speaking from one of the formerly rich countries (UK), we treat our doctors and teachers incredibly shabbily - long hours, low pay, terrible conditions. It's frankly a miracle that anyone over the last 15 years has gone into either profession. Fix the low pay and terrible conditions and yeah, you'll easily produce enough doctors and teachers, but late-stage capitalism isn't going to do that...
      - dagw 3y ago
        Fix the low pay and terrible conditions and yeah If the UK where to offer doctors the best pay and working conditions in the world, it could fix the UK doctor shortage, but only by 'stealing' doctors from other countries and making their situation even worse. To the best of my knowledge there aren't many empty slots at UK medical schools due to no one wanting to be doctors. It's 'easy' for any one richer country to fix their problems simply by outspending and buying up resources from a 'poorer' country (in fact some people claim the UK's problems are due to other countries buying up all the UK doctors and nurses), but that doesn't solve the global problem
ben_w 3y ago
> The logical conclusion of perfect sensors and tensors is not here, and the lacking substitutes along the way will be profit-driven, not solution-driven. Quite possibly both; governments only switched to universal education instead of having 12 year olds in factories because it was good for the economy, even if some of the lessons are supposed to be good for the (for lack of a better term) "soul".
RecycledEle 3y ago
AIs have been shown to have better empathy then human physicians. AIs have more patience than human teachers.
redhale 3y ago
The fallacy you are falling victim to, which is common in these debates, is comparing an LLM teacher to a human teacher as a 1-1 replacement, when really you need to be comparing an LLM teacher to what a child has today outside of access to a human teacher: static books and today's internet + search engines. It's very easy for me to see how an "LLM teacher" developed and trained specifically for that purpose could be of HUGE value over that status quo. That doesn't mean that the child's human teacher goes away, only that they now have access to a new amazing tool at home as well.

Jack000 3y ago

I didn't say they would be better. Most people on earth lack any access to healthcare at all. https://shorturl.at/joA23 https://shorturl.at/joA23

infecto 3y ago

Unfortunately most doctors don’t have the time to be that hands on and at the end of the day are just taking your symptoms and comparing it to their flesh database of illness. There is a lot of value from just having help diagnose/triage people with illness. Certainly not a replacement but definitely a complement to get access to healthcare to more.

dagw 3y ago

Doctors can touch, feel, understand... Sure they can, but many don't either because of lack of time, or quite frankly, because many doctors are bad at their job. And even in the best case scenario we will never be able to provide doctors to 100% of the population. For many people the choice won't be AI or a (free) caring, passionate doctor who has time to understand you and answer your questions, it's AI or nothing. Same with teaching. A lot of people simply don't have access to teachers, and if even the ones that do, might not have teachers that have the time and knowledge to actually teach what they want to learn.

krapp 3y ago
This is an argument in favor of more human doctors and teachers, not replacing doctors and teachers with software.
- ben_w 3y ago
  By itself it's an argument for both; the argument for "we can't have more doctors" is "we want some of those people to do other things besides doctoring".
- dagw 3y ago
  The richest countries in the world cannot even produce enough competent doctors and teachers to fill their current needs. A world that produces enough skilled human doctors to meet everyones needs is even more science fiction than a world with skilled AI doctors.
  - krapp 3y ago
    The richest countries in the world choose not to produce enough competent doctors because of capitalist incentives, not because it's actually impossible.
    - check89 3y ago
      What do you mean?
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    Speaking from one of the formerly rich countries (UK), we treat our doctors and teachers incredibly shabbily - long hours, low pay, terrible conditions. It's frankly a miracle that anyone over the last 15 years has gone into either profession. Fix the low pay and terrible conditions and yeah, you'll easily produce enough doctors and teachers, but late-stage capitalism isn't going to do that...
    - dagw 3y ago
      Fix the low pay and terrible conditions and yeah If the UK where to offer doctors the best pay and working conditions in the world, it could fix the UK doctor shortage, but only by 'stealing' doctors from other countries and making their situation even worse. To the best of my knowledge there aren't many empty slots at UK medical schools due to no one wanting to be doctors. It's 'easy' for any one richer country to fix their problems simply by outspending and buying up resources from a 'poorer' country (in fact some people claim the UK's problems are due to other countries buying up all the UK doctors and nurses), but that doesn't solve the global problem

ben_w 3y ago

> The logical conclusion of perfect sensors and tensors is not here, and the lacking substitutes along the way will be profit-driven, not solution-driven. Quite possibly both; governments only switched to universal education instead of having 12 year olds in factories because it was good for the economy, even if some of the lessons are supposed to be good for the (for lack of a better term) "soul".

RecycledEle 3y ago

AIs have been shown to have better empathy then human physicians. AIs have more patience than human teachers.

redhale 3y ago

The fallacy you are falling victim to, which is common in these debates, is comparing an LLM teacher to a human teacher as a 1-1 replacement, when really you need to be comparing an LLM teacher to what a child has today outside of access to a human teacher: static books and today's internet + search engines. It's very easy for me to see how an "LLM teacher" developed and trained specifically for that purpose could be of HUGE value over that status quo. That doesn't mean that the child's human teacher goes away, only that they now have access to a new amazing tool at home as well.