6 ms·

Awesome. It’s great what is becoming possible in healthcare when you can keep asking questions until you’re no longer confused, and keep feeding data in, more t

Awesome. It’s great what is becoming possible in healthcare when you can keep asking questions until you’re no longer confused, and keep feeding data in, more than any overworked doctor could handle. It won’t always be correct, and needs all the right disclaimers. A friend of mine whose father is sadly very ill, made use of ChatGPT to interpret the oncology reports written about his dad. It helped him have deep technical conversations with multiple specialists and advocate for his dad, culminating in his advocacy for a treatment - that none of the specialists had thought of - which proved critical in extending his dad’s life. Now my buddy can chat to specialists in their own language and hands the info to ChatGPT to turn into layman’s terms for his dad - all of which my friend can check over for accuracy so he knows his dad is getting correct non-technical explanations. That is massive empowerment.

yieldcrv 2y ago
This has been my experience the last 2 years as well In my local area’s subreddit, people are entirely dismissive of AI and will keep moving the goalpost about why you cant use it. It hallucinates! (But you can fact check it and I wrote that disclaimer) It warms the planet more than other research! (…. you’re not distinguishing between self hosted and data centers….) But its Los Angeles and writers and actors and VFX are all getting replaced, so they have to keep saying ignorant stuff to sound relevant
- 52-6F-62 2y ago
  No. You have to ask yourself why it hasn’t been used in this capacity more, and why so many billions are spent on pursuing crushing the arts and crafts into oblivion. Given the published and (and currently expressing) philosophies of the primary investors and shareholders of those companies, it is no longer any mystery why!
  - jjallen 2y ago
    What do you mean it's no longer a mystery? I don't understand. Wouldn't the investors and shareholders want more usage of their products, almost regardless of the subject matter?
    - 52-6F-62 2y ago
      You should read about Curtis Yarvin and his influence and circles…
      - jjallen 2y ago
        I’m familiar with him and have met him. I am definitely not familiar with what he has to do with this though. Has been a while.
  - brookst 2y ago
    Can you elaborate? I haven’t seen any of these philosophies that are apparently about crushing art. As a part time artist, AI has been great for me. I’m creating more, and spending less time on scaffolding (I am a middling-at-best programmer). I’m feeling empowered, not crushed.
    - neom 2y ago
      This happens every cycle. I helped build deviantart, I went as cohort 1 to the first pure digital film program in Canada 20 years ago now, I have 3 emmy awards. I've heard this so many times, it's the continuation of humans clinging to the tooling aspect of the work. I'm grateful my father always taught me "a maker never blames their tools" - and I think that is what this at the end boils down to, the analogue people were so tied to the tool they couldn't imagine their art without it, so instead the new digital film tools made the art less art somehow. Heck for some period of time the film societies when we had salons would not accept digital work, even into the more creative categories.
      - 52-6F-62 2y ago
        So much hubris. You think its about the tools? How can you say something like this as Meta steals 82gb of text from the worlds writers and producers of knowledge without compensation, on the sly, to build their system? Its the thieving and the disrespect! This does not bode well for the future. If you think it stops at the artists you have so much contempt for, think again.
        neom 2y ago
        When I was in art school I walked into the studio and this dude was doing his thing... his thing was re-creating this image he found in some book. I thought "what a fucking cheater" and shook my head. Well I came second to him on that assignment, so I went to the dean of our art school and I said "Chris committed plagiarism and his work should be removed from the salon" and explained - Dean looked at me like I was crazy and said "the most creative things simply hide the source of their creativity, good artists know that, get out of my office". I don't know what your definition of art is, but after art school I realized it's simply "anything that isn't science" This is exactly about tools, tools and the fact that people with no artistic ability have relied on them heavily, it's not my problem or the problem of OpenAI that people are just bad at art, but people are indeed bad at art, and it's always people who blabber on about the tools. Oh yeah, and while I'm at it, I don't believe in copyright, so there is that too.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I have the same response to both sides of that: The reason for both things is that the best models perform, at best, on the level of a recent graduate. When would you hire a recent graduate in either role, if you could afford better? These models are essentially the same models for both science and art, and it was a surprise to everyone that GPT-3 was able to turn into ChatGPT, or that Stable Diffusion was able to generalise so well with relatively few issues (even despite the occasional Cronenberg anatomy study). The flaws with the LLMs that prevent accurate science are the same flaws that cause object impermanence in written stories; the flaws that prevent image and video models from being physically plausible are the same flaws — incorrect world model — that cause them to be wrong about weather forecasts, chemistry, etc. In both cases, increasing quality of AI raises the metaphorical water level, and in this example rising tides don't lift all boats, but instead drown (the careers of) people who can't swim. I don't have a fix for that, and I'm deeply skeptical that any of the suggestions from the AI firms will work — they're not economists, and even if they were (or even if they hired loads), if the AI companies are right, this change will be at least as big as the industrial revolution, which upended old economic models.
    - ftrobro 2y ago
      Unfortunately sometimes even experienced people make mistakes that a recent graduate should not do (but in practice sometimes does). AI models can help avoid mistakes that in hindsight were obvious and should never have happened.
  - CrimsonRain 2y ago
    The crushing you are talking about, if it is possible, it should definitely be done. Enjoy.
    - 52-6F-62 2y ago
      The universe is a poet. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
      - gosub100 2y ago
        you don't even know what that quote means
      - CrimsonRain 2y ago
        Blah blah. Don't group me with you. You're the type of person who would support making self fueling illegal because what will the fuel boy do then... I welcome the day ai can take my job.
  - SkyBelow 2y ago
    AI does best in places where there is plenty of data for training and where messing up when used is only a mild problem (and where the problem is quick and low cost to identify). Art fits both of these categories. Healthcare data does not. What data does exist is much more private and extracting data from research papers is much harder than extracting data from images. When something goes wrong, the impact is much more negative if it is being used in any serious capacity. This is also why AI is just beginning to crack into short video and does nothing for long form videos yet, and even less on games, despite these falling in arts and crafts.
    - 52-6F-62 2y ago
      I totally understand. And so many tech bros misunderstand. Its not a problem with the tools and its not the money. Artists have extensive experience going hungry. So have I. I doubt many tech bros and technocrats know what starving feels like. Real hunger. But I digress. Its how the tech is being wielded. Its not just: can the robot imitate a nice picture. Its: artists are deprecated. And it mistakes artifice and artifact for art as a practice, and so conveniently cannot process any information about the subject beyond that final conclusion. None of this is hidden or arcane stuff, but effort has to be made to learn new perspectives… kind of like how the world has readily adopted new technology. What should be a reciprocal exchange is rapidly turning one sided and tyrannical. Woe be the future where any such single-minded ignorance takes absolute control (as is the current missive emerging out of SV at present) See Yarvin’s missive as adopted by so many VC’s in the current political plays. The way the tech is being wielded is all about power. Forced power over others. https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        > See Yarvin’s missive as adopted by so many VC’s in the current political plays. The way the tech is being wielded is all about power. Forced power over others. This cannot be overstated.
dax_ 2y ago
I'm glad it worked out for your friend, but I can't help feeling extremely sad about this. What I mean is, why is the healthcare system so broken in the first place, that you need to take charge of your own diagnosis and treatment? AI in this case is a bandaid solution, improving something you shouldn't have to do all.
- pjc50 2y ago
  I don't know if it was once different, but this seems to be a constant both in the US for-profit model and the UK not-for-profit one. After all, you are the person who knows you best, and has your own interests most at heart. So you need to advocate for yourself. Which can be extremely difficult in some situations, so you also need family who understand and are willing to help you.
  - mandmandam 2y ago
    > and the UK not-for-profit one. The UK "not-for-profit" system has been systematically underfunded for decades [0], in the yacht-class' hopes that it can be privatized like the American system. Yes, it was once different. Not that these things don't happen even in well funded systems, but the NHS isn't a great example of "not-for-profit" healthcare. 0 - https://www.ft.com/content/b593116d-f948-4757-b2fa-c74adadc8b42 https://www.ft.com/content/b593116d-f948-4757-b2fa-c74adadc8...
    - arionhardison 2y ago
      Im rebuilding both from the ground up for fun: - no funding - no ads - etc... just an idea I had while locked up in SF county. https://us.medicare.dev https://us.medicare.dev https://nhs.dev https://nhs.dev Its nothing that will fix healthcare or anything like that, but it's been fun learning about things like "Digital Twins", "FHIR" etc... and it actually works; meaning the Agent can help you achieve a desired health outcome (sometimes)
- nucleardog 2y ago
  The doctor's doing the equivalent of trying to diagnose and fix a bug where they're only given 10 minutes once a week to try and solve it (losing all their context in between) and can't directly check anything but the most superficial things. If they need more information, they have to refer the patient to somebody that can run check for one specific kind of issue in one specific place and will then provide a two sentence report back. Then they'll get another 10 minutes with that extra data point to try and come up with next steps. They can refer them to a specialist, and that person is going to only look at one small part of the context to try and come up with recommendations. In this sort of setup it's _very_ easy to miss relevant information. Having somebody involved who is focused on the big picture and can surface relevant information and advocate based on it is really essential to getting the best outcomes. And generally the only person involved to take on that role is... the patient. I don't think that makes the entire system broken, but it could definitely be improved. The best solution I can think of is essentially to have someone with a medical background designated to take that role on your behalf. And apparently that's already a thing--a "case manager". (Though apparently in the US that term's been overloaded to mean "the person that works with your insurance company to do the wallet biopsy".) Though I haven't ever really run across anyone taking that role, and I'm certain wherever they are they're completely overworked and can't fulfill the role as effectively as we like. I'm very much _not_ on the AI bandwagon and am really looking forward to all of this falling on its face so I can stop hearing about it and we can go back to finding solutions to problems instead of problems for solutions. However this does seem like one place where a LLM and adjacent developments could provide some benefit. A large part of advocating for yourself effectively is just knowing the right questions to ask and what information might be important to surface in the current situation. And all of this is being handed off to human experts, not being directly relied on or acted on by a laymen. As a brief example: My wife developed a heart arrhythmia. The ER doctor was following the standard framework for dealing with this and was prescribing beta blockers and a blood thinner. While the ER doctor had a _lot_ of information in front of her face, what she didn't have was time to sit and dig through my wife's entire medical history. If she did, she would have found that the out-of-wack blood pressure readings she'd written off as "your heart's kinda fucked right now" were actually an on-going and previously diagnosed issue of low blood pressure. In that moment I didn't need to understand everything or make any concrete recommendations, just make the connection "slower heart = less output?" + "already low output" = "problem?". Surfacing that information and asking the doctor whether we should be concerned didn't set the direction of her treatment, but it did change it. The doctor went to consult with a cardiologist before prescribing anything and came back with a different treatment plan. It definitely seems like an area playing to an LLMs strengths (digesting a bunch of information and trying to relate it to the situation at hand) while avoiding the pitfalls. Ultimately everything is still in the doctor's hands, and the information it's giving is purely _additive_ and already being treated with suspicion. Even if it misses or hallucinates something we're not much worse off than we were without it.
refurb 2y ago
> culminating in his advocacy for a treatment - that none of the specialists had thought of - which proved critical in extending his dad’s life. I'm not sure how your friend could know that it was critical in extending his dad's life. All treatment decisions in oncology are basically "look at the available data, make an educated guess which one is best for the patient". When it comes to some treatments, it's more an art than a science. Plenty of the available data is anecdotal at best - small trials (or retrospective data) on half a dozen patients with no control. The role of the oncologist is often being able to interpret that data to make the best recommendation they can. This isn't easy, and for most oncologists who aren't doing research (and arguing with other oncologists about the latest data), they are going to rely on guidelines which attempt to look at all the literature and make recommendations based on the most robust data. But whether your friend's dad has gotten therapy X or Y, nobody knows what the course of the disease would have looked like using the alternative.

yieldcrv 2y ago

This has been my experience the last 2 years as well In my local area’s subreddit, people are entirely dismissive of AI and will keep moving the goalpost about why you cant use it. It hallucinates! (But you can fact check it and I wrote that disclaimer) It warms the planet more than other research! (…. you’re not distinguishing between self hosted and data centers….) But its Los Angeles and writers and actors and VFX are all getting replaced, so they have to keep saying ignorant stuff to sound relevant

52-6F-62 2y ago
No. You have to ask yourself why it hasn’t been used in this capacity more, and why so many billions are spent on pursuing crushing the arts and crafts into oblivion. Given the published and (and currently expressing) philosophies of the primary investors and shareholders of those companies, it is no longer any mystery why!
- jjallen 2y ago
  What do you mean it's no longer a mystery? I don't understand. Wouldn't the investors and shareholders want more usage of their products, almost regardless of the subject matter?
  - 52-6F-62 2y ago
    You should read about Curtis Yarvin and his influence and circles…
    - jjallen 2y ago
      I’m familiar with him and have met him. I am definitely not familiar with what he has to do with this though. Has been a while.
- brookst 2y ago
  Can you elaborate? I haven’t seen any of these philosophies that are apparently about crushing art. As a part time artist, AI has been great for me. I’m creating more, and spending less time on scaffolding (I am a middling-at-best programmer). I’m feeling empowered, not crushed.
  - neom 2y ago
    This happens every cycle. I helped build deviantart, I went as cohort 1 to the first pure digital film program in Canada 20 years ago now, I have 3 emmy awards. I've heard this so many times, it's the continuation of humans clinging to the tooling aspect of the work. I'm grateful my father always taught me "a maker never blames their tools" - and I think that is what this at the end boils down to, the analogue people were so tied to the tool they couldn't imagine their art without it, so instead the new digital film tools made the art less art somehow. Heck for some period of time the film societies when we had salons would not accept digital work, even into the more creative categories.
    - 52-6F-62 2y ago
      So much hubris. You think its about the tools? How can you say something like this as Meta steals 82gb of text from the worlds writers and producers of knowledge without compensation, on the sly, to build their system? Its the thieving and the disrespect! This does not bode well for the future. If you think it stops at the artists you have so much contempt for, think again.
      - neom 2y ago
        When I was in art school I walked into the studio and this dude was doing his thing... his thing was re-creating this image he found in some book. I thought "what a fucking cheater" and shook my head. Well I came second to him on that assignment, so I went to the dean of our art school and I said "Chris committed plagiarism and his work should be removed from the salon" and explained - Dean looked at me like I was crazy and said "the most creative things simply hide the source of their creativity, good artists know that, get out of my office". I don't know what your definition of art is, but after art school I realized it's simply "anything that isn't science" This is exactly about tools, tools and the fact that people with no artistic ability have relied on them heavily, it's not my problem or the problem of OpenAI that people are just bad at art, but people are indeed bad at art, and it's always people who blabber on about the tools. Oh yeah, and while I'm at it, I don't believe in copyright, so there is that too.
- ben_w 2y ago
  I have the same response to both sides of that: The reason for both things is that the best models perform, at best, on the level of a recent graduate. When would you hire a recent graduate in either role, if you could afford better? These models are essentially the same models for both science and art, and it was a surprise to everyone that GPT-3 was able to turn into ChatGPT, or that Stable Diffusion was able to generalise so well with relatively few issues (even despite the occasional Cronenberg anatomy study). The flaws with the LLMs that prevent accurate science are the same flaws that cause object impermanence in written stories; the flaws that prevent image and video models from being physically plausible are the same flaws — incorrect world model — that cause them to be wrong about weather forecasts, chemistry, etc. In both cases, increasing quality of AI raises the metaphorical water level, and in this example rising tides don't lift all boats, but instead drown (the careers of) people who can't swim. I don't have a fix for that, and I'm deeply skeptical that any of the suggestions from the AI firms will work — they're not economists, and even if they were (or even if they hired loads), if the AI companies are right, this change will be at least as big as the industrial revolution, which upended old economic models.
  - ftrobro 2y ago
    Unfortunately sometimes even experienced people make mistakes that a recent graduate should not do (but in practice sometimes does). AI models can help avoid mistakes that in hindsight were obvious and should never have happened.
- CrimsonRain 2y ago
  The crushing you are talking about, if it is possible, it should definitely be done. Enjoy.
  - 52-6F-62 2y ago
    The universe is a poet. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
    - gosub100 2y ago
      you don't even know what that quote means
    - CrimsonRain 2y ago
      Blah blah. Don't group me with you. You're the type of person who would support making self fueling illegal because what will the fuel boy do then... I welcome the day ai can take my job.
- SkyBelow 2y ago
  AI does best in places where there is plenty of data for training and where messing up when used is only a mild problem (and where the problem is quick and low cost to identify). Art fits both of these categories. Healthcare data does not. What data does exist is much more private and extracting data from research papers is much harder than extracting data from images. When something goes wrong, the impact is much more negative if it is being used in any serious capacity. This is also why AI is just beginning to crack into short video and does nothing for long form videos yet, and even less on games, despite these falling in arts and crafts.
  - 52-6F-62 2y ago
    I totally understand. And so many tech bros misunderstand. Its not a problem with the tools and its not the money. Artists have extensive experience going hungry. So have I. I doubt many tech bros and technocrats know what starving feels like. Real hunger. But I digress. Its how the tech is being wielded. Its not just: can the robot imitate a nice picture. Its: artists are deprecated. And it mistakes artifice and artifact for art as a practice, and so conveniently cannot process any information about the subject beyond that final conclusion. None of this is hidden or arcane stuff, but effort has to be made to learn new perspectives… kind of like how the world has readily adopted new technology. What should be a reciprocal exchange is rapidly turning one sided and tyrannical. Woe be the future where any such single-minded ignorance takes absolute control (as is the current missive emerging out of SV at present) See Yarvin’s missive as adopted by so many VC’s in the current political plays. The way the tech is being wielded is all about power. Forced power over others. https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      > See Yarvin’s missive as adopted by so many VC’s in the current political plays. The way the tech is being wielded is all about power. Forced power over others. This cannot be overstated.

dax_ 2y ago

I'm glad it worked out for your friend, but I can't help feeling extremely sad about this. What I mean is, why is the healthcare system so broken in the first place, that you need to take charge of your own diagnosis and treatment? AI in this case is a bandaid solution, improving something you shouldn't have to do all.

pjc50 2y ago
I don't know if it was once different, but this seems to be a constant both in the US for-profit model and the UK not-for-profit one. After all, you are the person who knows you best, and has your own interests most at heart. So you need to advocate for yourself. Which can be extremely difficult in some situations, so you also need family who understand and are willing to help you.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > and the UK not-for-profit one. The UK "not-for-profit" system has been systematically underfunded for decades [0], in the yacht-class' hopes that it can be privatized like the American system. Yes, it was once different. Not that these things don't happen even in well funded systems, but the NHS isn't a great example of "not-for-profit" healthcare. 0 - https://www.ft.com/content/b593116d-f948-4757-b2fa-c74adadc8b42 https://www.ft.com/content/b593116d-f948-4757-b2fa-c74adadc8...
  - arionhardison 2y ago
    Im rebuilding both from the ground up for fun: - no funding - no ads - etc... just an idea I had while locked up in SF county. https://us.medicare.dev https://us.medicare.dev https://nhs.dev https://nhs.dev Its nothing that will fix healthcare or anything like that, but it's been fun learning about things like "Digital Twins", "FHIR" etc... and it actually works; meaning the Agent can help you achieve a desired health outcome (sometimes)
nucleardog 2y ago
The doctor's doing the equivalent of trying to diagnose and fix a bug where they're only given 10 minutes once a week to try and solve it (losing all their context in between) and can't directly check anything but the most superficial things. If they need more information, they have to refer the patient to somebody that can run check for one specific kind of issue in one specific place and will then provide a two sentence report back. Then they'll get another 10 minutes with that extra data point to try and come up with next steps. They can refer them to a specialist, and that person is going to only look at one small part of the context to try and come up with recommendations. In this sort of setup it's _very_ easy to miss relevant information. Having somebody involved who is focused on the big picture and can surface relevant information and advocate based on it is really essential to getting the best outcomes. And generally the only person involved to take on that role is... the patient. I don't think that makes the entire system broken, but it could definitely be improved. The best solution I can think of is essentially to have someone with a medical background designated to take that role on your behalf. And apparently that's already a thing--a "case manager". (Though apparently in the US that term's been overloaded to mean "the person that works with your insurance company to do the wallet biopsy".) Though I haven't ever really run across anyone taking that role, and I'm certain wherever they are they're completely overworked and can't fulfill the role as effectively as we like. I'm very much _not_ on the AI bandwagon and am really looking forward to all of this falling on its face so I can stop hearing about it and we can go back to finding solutions to problems instead of problems for solutions. However this does seem like one place where a LLM and adjacent developments could provide some benefit. A large part of advocating for yourself effectively is just knowing the right questions to ask and what information might be important to surface in the current situation. And all of this is being handed off to human experts, not being directly relied on or acted on by a laymen. As a brief example: My wife developed a heart arrhythmia. The ER doctor was following the standard framework for dealing with this and was prescribing beta blockers and a blood thinner. While the ER doctor had a _lot_ of information in front of her face, what she didn't have was time to sit and dig through my wife's entire medical history. If she did, she would have found that the out-of-wack blood pressure readings she'd written off as "your heart's kinda fucked right now" were actually an on-going and previously diagnosed issue of low blood pressure. In that moment I didn't need to understand everything or make any concrete recommendations, just make the connection "slower heart = less output?" + "already low output" = "problem?". Surfacing that information and asking the doctor whether we should be concerned didn't set the direction of her treatment, but it did change it. The doctor went to consult with a cardiologist before prescribing anything and came back with a different treatment plan. It definitely seems like an area playing to an LLMs strengths (digesting a bunch of information and trying to relate it to the situation at hand) while avoiding the pitfalls. Ultimately everything is still in the doctor's hands, and the information it's giving is purely _additive_ and already being treated with suspicion. Even if it misses or hallucinates something we're not much worse off than we were without it.

refurb 2y ago

> culminating in his advocacy for a treatment - that none of the specialists had thought of - which proved critical in extending his dad’s life. I'm not sure how your friend could know that it was critical in extending his dad's life. All treatment decisions in oncology are basically "look at the available data, make an educated guess which one is best for the patient". When it comes to some treatments, it's more an art than a science. Plenty of the available data is anecdotal at best - small trials (or retrospective data) on half a dozen patients with no control. The role of the oncologist is often being able to interpret that data to make the best recommendation they can. This isn't easy, and for most oncologists who aren't doing research (and arguing with other oncologists about the latest data), they are going to rely on guidelines which attempt to look at all the literature and make recommendations based on the most robust data. But whether your friend's dad has gotten therapy X or Y, nobody knows what the course of the disease would have looked like using the alternative.