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OpenAI updates terms to forbid usage for medical and legal advice

26 points by piskov 1y ago

_wire_ 1y ago
Haha! What a joke "You can't believe how smart and capable this thing is, ready to take over and run the world" (Not suitable for any particular purpose - Use at your own risk - See warnings - User is responsible for safe operation...) (Pan from home robot clumsily depositing clean dishes into an empty dishwasher to a man in VR goggles in next room making all the motions of placing objects in a box) Check all services you wish to subscribe ($1000 per service per month): - Put laundry in washing machine - Microwave mac & cheese dinner - Change and feed baby - Get granny to toilet - Fix Windows software update error on PC - Reboot wifi router to restore internet connection
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Standard cop-out that software companies always try to include. They disclaim any warranty of merchantibility and fitness for a particular purpose. So if you try to claim that the software doesn't do what it's supposed to do, they take no responsibility for that.
piskov 1y ago
Unless the following excludes (which it shouldn’t) personal use vs batch one: Empower people. People should be able to make decisions about their lives and their communities. So we don’t allow our services to be used to manipulate or deceive people, to interfere with their exercise of human rights, to exploit people’s vulnerabilities, or to interfere with their ability to get an education or access critical services, including any use for: … automation of high-stakes decisions in sensitive areas without human review: - critical infrastructure - education - housing - employment - financial activities and credit insurance - legal === - medical === - essential government services - product safety components - national security - migration - law enforcement
SilverElfin 1y ago
Wouldn’t this affect many prominent startups? Why wouldn’t they move to a competitor? Is OpenAI assuming to just be for consumers?
- piskov 1y ago
  What stops others to do the same (if they haven’t already)? It’s a safe bet: we don’t allow you to ask for medical advice so we are not liable if you do and drink mercury or what have you based on our advice.
MrCoffee7 1y ago
You can still ask questions for medical advice. You just need to phrase the question more like a hypothetical one instead of making it obvious that you are asking for yourself.
geor9e 1y ago
HN Headline is categorically false. "you cannot use our services for: provision of tailored advice that requires a license, such as legal or medical advice, without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional" So, they didn't add any handrails, filters, or blocks to the software. This is just boilerplate "consult your doctor too!" to cover their ass.
- unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
  Doesn’t prohibit brainstorming what to ask your doctor, or which professional consultation to prioritize. Does prohibit, for illustration, LLM-powered surgical device. Everything else is “gray area”?
  - geor9e 1y ago
    Prohibits in the "I'm a sign, not a cop" sense. There is no way for them to even remotely verify if you are "without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional" in the room, so to a rebellious outlaw, these prohibitions might as well not exist.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    > brainstorming what to ask your doctor Generally a bad idea. If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school.
    - ralph84 1y ago
      I don’t want to be a doctor, I just want to fix what ails me. You don’t need an MD to research symptoms.
      - OutOfHere 1y ago
        GPT saved me yesterday. It helped me identify and verify a rare three-way undocumented medicine interaction that was causing anguish. The interaction was hypomagnesia and serious arrhythmia caused by a combination of berberine, famotidine, and vonoprazan. This was despite magnesium supplementation. Two months ago it helped me accurately identify a gastrointestinal diverticulitis-type issue, find the right medication for it (metronidazole), which fixed the issue for good. It also guided me on identifying the cause, and also on pausing and restoring fiber intake appropriately. Granted, it is very easy for people to make serious mistakes in using LLMs, but granted how many mistakes doctors make, it is better to take some self-responsibility first. The road to making a useful diagnosis can be windy, but with sufficient exploration, GPT will get you there.
jitbit 1y ago
Why is this flagged? This is pretty significant actually. So stories like this are no longer possible? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45734582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45734582
whatpeoplewant 1y ago
This update pushes LLMs away from direct advice toward decision-support, which is where multi-agent/agentic patterns help. An agentic LLM can orchestrate retrieval of clinical/legal guidelines, run structured checklists, and escalate to licensed humans, while parallel agents cross-check citations, calibrate uncertainty, and enforce refusal policies. A distributed agentic AI with provenance and audit trails won’t remove liability, but it’s a more defensible architecture than a single end-to-end chatbot for high-risk domains.

26 points by piskov 1y ago

Haha! What a joke "You can't believe how smart and capable this thing is, ready to take over and run the world" (Not suitable for any particular purpose - Use at your own risk - See warnings - User is responsible for safe operation...) (Pan from home robot clumsily depositing clean dishes into an empty dishwasher to a man in VR goggles in next room making all the motions of placing objects in a box) Check all services you wish to subscribe ($1000 per service per month): - Put laundry in washing machine - Microwave mac & cheese dinner - Change and feed baby - Get granny to toilet - Fix Windows software update error on PC - Reboot wifi router to restore internet connection

SoftTalker 1y ago
Standard cop-out that software companies always try to include. They disclaim any warranty of merchantibility and fitness for a particular purpose. So if you try to claim that the software doesn't do what it's supposed to do, they take no responsibility for that.

piskov 1y ago

Unless the following excludes (which it shouldn’t) personal use vs batch one: Empower people. People should be able to make decisions about their lives and their communities. So we don’t allow our services to be used to manipulate or deceive people, to interfere with their exercise of human rights, to exploit people’s vulnerabilities, or to interfere with their ability to get an education or access critical services, including any use for: … automation of high-stakes decisions in sensitive areas without human review: - critical infrastructure - education - housing - employment - financial activities and credit insurance - legal === - medical === - essential government services - product safety components - national security - migration - law enforcement

SilverElfin 1y ago

Wouldn’t this affect many prominent startups? Why wouldn’t they move to a competitor? Is OpenAI assuming to just be for consumers?

piskov 1y ago
What stops others to do the same (if they haven’t already)? It’s a safe bet: we don’t allow you to ask for medical advice so we are not liable if you do and drink mercury or what have you based on our advice.

MrCoffee7 1y ago

You can still ask questions for medical advice. You just need to phrase the question more like a hypothetical one instead of making it obvious that you are asking for yourself.

geor9e 1y ago

HN Headline is categorically false. "you cannot use our services for: provision of tailored advice that requires a license, such as legal or medical advice, without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional" So, they didn't add any handrails, filters, or blocks to the software. This is just boilerplate "consult your doctor too!" to cover their ass.

unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
Doesn’t prohibit brainstorming what to ask your doctor, or which professional consultation to prioritize. Does prohibit, for illustration, LLM-powered surgical device. Everything else is “gray area”?
- geor9e 1y ago
  Prohibits in the "I'm a sign, not a cop" sense. There is no way for them to even remotely verify if you are "without appropriate involvement by a licensed professional" in the room, so to a rebellious outlaw, these prohibitions might as well not exist.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  > brainstorming what to ask your doctor Generally a bad idea. If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school.
  - ralph84 1y ago
    I don’t want to be a doctor, I just want to fix what ails me. You don’t need an MD to research symptoms.
    - OutOfHere 1y ago
      GPT saved me yesterday. It helped me identify and verify a rare three-way undocumented medicine interaction that was causing anguish. The interaction was hypomagnesia and serious arrhythmia caused by a combination of berberine, famotidine, and vonoprazan. This was despite magnesium supplementation. Two months ago it helped me accurately identify a gastrointestinal diverticulitis-type issue, find the right medication for it (metronidazole), which fixed the issue for good. It also guided me on identifying the cause, and also on pausing and restoring fiber intake appropriately. Granted, it is very easy for people to make serious mistakes in using LLMs, but granted how many mistakes doctors make, it is better to take some self-responsibility first. The road to making a useful diagnosis can be windy, but with sufficient exploration, GPT will get you there.

jitbit 1y ago

Why is this flagged? This is pretty significant actually. So stories like this are no longer possible? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45734582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45734582

whatpeoplewant 1y ago

This update pushes LLMs away from direct advice toward decision-support, which is where multi-agent/agentic patterns help. An agentic LLM can orchestrate retrieval of clinical/legal guidelines, run structured checklists, and escalate to licensed humans, while parallel agents cross-check citations, calibrate uncertainty, and enforce refusal policies. A distributed agentic AI with provenance and audit trails won’t remove liability, but it’s a more defensible architecture than a single end-to-end chatbot for high-risk domains.