3 ms·

The thought of LLMs doing pharmacology sends shivers down me spine ...

johnisgood 1y ago
Oh no, I meant it refusing to answer pharmacology 101 questions. At one time it did not want to give me the pharmacokinetics of one medication because of its ToS.
- Bluestein 1y ago
  I see - thanks.- (That sounds broken. It's basic, useful, harmless information ...)
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    Exactly. I remember saying "but it is a publicly available information", that it is in books, etc. and it went on and on about "I understand your frustration, but I cannot give you ...", etc. :D In the end I did manage to get it to answer, however. This was (is) not limited to pharmacology, however.
    - Bluestein 1y ago
      I am interested: What other fields? How did you manage?
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Thankfully there is now searchability, so I would have to search for this particular chat, this was some time ago. I think once it starts to tell you "no", it almost never will turn to "okay, I'll tell you" (maybe only if there were one or two "no"s), so I probably started a new chat, and added how it is for research purposes and whatnot. I do not remember the specifics and I would really have to search for the chat to be able to give you specifics. I may have to search for "sorry" or something. I found something though. I asked it for the interaction between two medications, and it told me "I am sorry you are going through this, but I can't give you information about ...", which I guess is still pharmacology. Edit: I remember another case. It was related to reverse engineering. Edit #2: I found another! I cannot give you specifics, but I asked for it to give me some example sentences for something, and it went on about "consensual relationships" and so forth, even though my partner consented. I told the LLM that she did consent and it went on about that "I'm sorry, but even if she consented, I cannot give you ... because ... and is not healthy ...", and so forth. (Do not think of anything bad here! :P)
- rvnx 1y ago
  Claude convinced me to take a very important medication, without Claude I would not have had the balls to take it (because of the potential side-effects) and it showed me all the possible medications, and the benefits/risk balance between this and being untreated. At the end, went to doctor, offered me the same choices. No regrets so far. Without it, I would suffer for nothing. It is a very good tool to investigate and discover things, could be also the opposite: seen a bit unproductive that it is censored, because doctors are mostly here for validation anyway for serious things.
  - sgt101 1y ago
    You are a sensible person and took professional advice. Other people are not sensible - look at all the junkies shooting who knows what into who knows where. A system that can advise cooks to put glue on pizza is probably not the best mechanism for providing healthcare advice to at least the section of the population who are likely to try it.
    - rvnx 1y ago
      I fully agree with you. It is an interesting tool, but to consider carefully, like you wouldn’t trust 100% what is written on the internet.
    - alwa 1y ago
      Would you suppose said junkies would be taking advice from a qualified medical professional otherwise? For that matter, would you suppose that they don’t know what they’re doing is bad for them? Witness the smokers who crack jokes about “cancer sticks” as they light up. It seems to me that, just as we all promise our dentists we floss every day and our doctors that we promise we’ll eat better, we might be more prone to be frank with “anonymous” chatbots—and thus get more frank advice in return, at least for clear-cut factual background and tradeoffs.
      - sgt101 1y ago
        I totally agree if the chatbots are actually reliable and controllable. LLMs have real problems with both of those things, they are unreliable in the sense that they produce text with factual inaccuracies and they are uncontrollable in that it's really hard to predict their behaviour from their past behaviour. Big open challenges in AI - I am sure that there will be solutions, but there aren't right now. I think it's very like self driving cars. Implementing a demo and showing it on the road is one thing, but then it takes twenty years before the slow roll out really gets underway.
rusticpenn 1y ago
Using Neural nets, Deep Learning in pharma is not something new. Naturally LLMs are different. You should look into personalized medicine.
touwer 1y ago
In this case, if it's only shivers down your spine, you're lucky ;)
- Bluestein 1y ago
  Heh. Well played.-

Oh no, I meant it refusing to answer pharmacology 101 questions. At one time it did not want to give me the pharmacokinetics of one medication because of its ToS.

Bluestein 1y ago
I see - thanks.- (That sounds broken. It's basic, useful, harmless information ...)
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Exactly. I remember saying "but it is a publicly available information", that it is in books, etc. and it went on and on about "I understand your frustration, but I cannot give you ...", etc. :D In the end I did manage to get it to answer, however. This was (is) not limited to pharmacology, however.
  - Bluestein 1y ago
    I am interested: What other fields? How did you manage?
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Thankfully there is now searchability, so I would have to search for this particular chat, this was some time ago. I think once it starts to tell you "no", it almost never will turn to "okay, I'll tell you" (maybe only if there were one or two "no"s), so I probably started a new chat, and added how it is for research purposes and whatnot. I do not remember the specifics and I would really have to search for the chat to be able to give you specifics. I may have to search for "sorry" or something. I found something though. I asked it for the interaction between two medications, and it told me "I am sorry you are going through this, but I can't give you information about ...", which I guess is still pharmacology. Edit: I remember another case. It was related to reverse engineering. Edit #2: I found another! I cannot give you specifics, but I asked for it to give me some example sentences for something, and it went on about "consensual relationships" and so forth, even though my partner consented. I told the LLM that she did consent and it went on about that "I'm sorry, but even if she consented, I cannot give you ... because ... and is not healthy ...", and so forth. (Do not think of anything bad here! :P)
rvnx 1y ago
Claude convinced me to take a very important medication, without Claude I would not have had the balls to take it (because of the potential side-effects) and it showed me all the possible medications, and the benefits/risk balance between this and being untreated. At the end, went to doctor, offered me the same choices. No regrets so far. Without it, I would suffer for nothing. It is a very good tool to investigate and discover things, could be also the opposite: seen a bit unproductive that it is censored, because doctors are mostly here for validation anyway for serious things.
- sgt101 1y ago
  You are a sensible person and took professional advice. Other people are not sensible - look at all the junkies shooting who knows what into who knows where. A system that can advise cooks to put glue on pizza is probably not the best mechanism for providing healthcare advice to at least the section of the population who are likely to try it.
  - rvnx 1y ago
    I fully agree with you. It is an interesting tool, but to consider carefully, like you wouldn’t trust 100% what is written on the internet.
  - alwa 1y ago
    Would you suppose said junkies would be taking advice from a qualified medical professional otherwise? For that matter, would you suppose that they don’t know what they’re doing is bad for them? Witness the smokers who crack jokes about “cancer sticks” as they light up. It seems to me that, just as we all promise our dentists we floss every day and our doctors that we promise we’ll eat better, we might be more prone to be frank with “anonymous” chatbots—and thus get more frank advice in return, at least for clear-cut factual background and tradeoffs.
    - sgt101 1y ago
      I totally agree if the chatbots are actually reliable and controllable. LLMs have real problems with both of those things, they are unreliable in the sense that they produce text with factual inaccuracies and they are uncontrollable in that it's really hard to predict their behaviour from their past behaviour. Big open challenges in AI - I am sure that there will be solutions, but there aren't right now. I think it's very like self driving cars. Implementing a demo and showing it on the road is one thing, but then it takes twenty years before the slow roll out really gets underway.

rusticpenn 1y ago

Using Neural nets, Deep Learning in pharma is not something new. Naturally LLMs are different. You should look into personalized medicine.

touwer 1y ago

In this case, if it's only shivers down your spine, you're lucky ;)

Bluestein 1y ago
Heh. Well played.-