4 ms·

Tricky…my son had a really rare congenital issue that no one could solve for a long time. After it was diagnosed I walked an older version of chat gpt through o

by cpfohl 11mo ago

Tricky…my son had a really rare congenital issue that no one could solve for a long time. After it was diagnosed I walked an older version of chat gpt through our experience and it suggested my son’s issue as a possibility along with the correct diagnostic tool in just one back and forth. I’m not saying we should be getting AI advice without a professional, but I’m my case it could have saved my kid a LOT of physical pain.

throwaway290 11mo ago
this is fresh news right? a friend just used chatgpt for medical advice last week (stuffed his wound with antibiotics after motorbike crash). are you saying you completely treated the congenital issue in this timeframe?
- cj 11mo ago
  He’s simply saying that ChatGPT was able to point them in the right direction after 1 chat exchange, compared to doctors who couldn’t for a long time. Edit: Not saying this is the case for the person above, but one thing that might bias these observations is ChatGPT’s memory features. If you have a chat about the condition after it’s diagnosed, you can’t use the same ChatGPT account to test whether it could have diagnosed the same thing (since the chatGPT account now knows the son has a specific condition). The memory features are awesome but also sucks at the same time. I feel myself getting stuck in a personalized bubble even more so than Google.
  - ninininino 11mo ago
    You can just use the wipe memory feature or if you don't trust that, then start a new account (new login creds), if you don't trust that then get a new device, cell provider/wifi, credit card, I.P, login creds etc.
    - cj 11mo ago
      Or start a “temporary” chat.
  - throwaway290 11mo ago
    > He’s simply saying that ChatGPT was able to point them in the right direction after 1 chat exchange, compared to doctors who couldn’t for a long time He literally wrote that. I asked how he knows it's the right direction. it must be treatment worked. otherwise it is more or less just a hunch people go "oh yep that's definitely it" too easily. it is the problem with self diagnosing. And you didn't even notice it happened... without more info this is not evidence.
    - cpfohl 11mo ago
      We had the diagnosis before I started with the LLM. The radiology showed the problem and the surgeries worked. Down to an ultrasound a year now! We took him to our local ER, they ran tests. I gave the LLM just the symptom list that I gave to the ER initially. It replied with all the things they tested for. I gave the test results, and it suggested a short list with diagnostics that included his actual Dx and the correct way to test for it.
      - throwaway290 11mo ago
        That's great that it worked so quickly too (and you could arrange surgery on such short notice). I'm sure more people with same issue may benefit from more details?
        cpfohl 11mo ago
        As it's my son's health issues, not my own, I'm going to preserve his privacy until he can consent to sharing in...8 years.
        throwaway290 11mo ago
        Apparently this news is just that it's "not allowed" by ToS, but ChatGPT will still give advice so it doesn't really matter. I thought the new model already denied you advice because you said you used an older model, but I guess it was unrelated to this news. By the way unless you used an anonymous mode I wonder how much the model knew from side channels that could contribute to suggesting correct diagnosis...
  - cpfohl 11mo ago
    This was before I started using it as anything but a toy. I had definitely not spoken about medical issues; it was on a whim.
tencentshill 11mo ago
We are all obligated to hoard as many offline AI models as possible if the larger ones are legally restricted like this.
- SlavikCA 11mo ago
  Google released MedGemma model: "optimized for medical text and image comprehension". I use it. Found it to be helpful.
rafaelmn 11mo ago
>After it was diagnosed I walked an older version of chat gpt through our experience and it suggested my son’s issue as a possibility along with the correct diagnostic tool in just one back and forth. Something I've noticed is that it's much easier to lead the LLM to the answer when you know where you want to go (even when the answer is factually wrong !), it doesn't have to be obvious leading but just framing the question in terms of mentioning all the symptoms you now know to be relevant in the order that's diagnosable, etc. Not saying that's the case here, you might have gotten the correct answer first try - but checking my now diagnosed gastritis I got stuff from GERD to CRC depending on which symptoms I decide to stress and which events I emphasize in the history.
- schiffern 11mo ago
  >checking my now diagnosed gastritis I got stuff from GERD to CRC depending on which symptoms I decide to stress and which events I emphasize in the history So... exactly the same behavior as human doctors?
  - kjellsbells 11mo ago
    Exactly the same behavior as a conversation with an idealized human doctor, perhaps. One who isn't tired, bored, stressed, biased, or just overworked. The value that folks get from chatgpt for medical advice is due in large part to the unhurried pace of the interaction. Didn't get it quite right? No doctor huffing and tapping their keyboard impatiently. Just refine the prompt and try as many times as you like. For the 80s HNers out there, when I hear people talk about talking with chatgpt, Kate Bush's song A Deeper Understanding comes immediately to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeper_Understanding?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeper_Understanding?wprov=sfl...
  - inglor_cz 11mo ago
    ChatGPT and similar tools hallucinate and can mislead you. Human doctors, on the other hand ... can be tired, hungover, thinking about a complicated case ahead of them, nauseous from a bad lunch, undergoing a divorce, alcoholics, depressed... We humans have a lot of failure modes.
terminalshort 11mo ago
Why are you saying we shouldn't get AI advice without a "professional", then? Why is everybody here saying "in my experience it's just as good or better, but we need rules to make people use the worse option"? I have narcolepsy and it took a dozen doctors before they got it right. AI nails the diagnosis. Everybody should be using it.
- pinnochio 11mo ago
  Survivorship bias.
  - teitoklien 11mo ago
    Experience working with doctors a few times, and then we’ll see all the bias if one is still surviving lol. Doctors are some of the most corrupt professions who are more focused on selling drugs they get paid commission for to promote, or they obsess over tons and tons of expensive medical tests, that they themselves often know is not needed, except they ask for it, simply out of fear of courts suing them for negligence in future or because again , THEY GET A COMMISSION from the testing agencies for sending them clients. And even with all of that info, they often come out with the wrong conclusions at times. Doctors do a critically important role in our society and during covid they risked their lives for us, more than anyone else, i do not want to insult or bring down the amount of hard work doctors do for their society. But worshipping them as holier than thou gods is bullshit, that almost anyone who has spent some time with going back and forth with various doctors over the course of years will come to the conclusion of. Having an AI assistant doesnt hurt, in terms of medical hints, we need to make having Personal Responsibility popular again, in society’s obsession for making every thing “idiot proof” or “baby proof” we keep losing all sorts of useful and interesting solutions because our politicians have a strong itch to regulate anything and everything they can get their hands on, to leave a mark on society.
    - pinnochio 11mo ago
      > But worshipping them as holier than thou gods is bullshit I'd say the same about AI.
tamimio 11mo ago
That's the experience of a lot of people I know or read their stories online, but it isn't about AI bad diagnosis, it's because they know in 5 years doctors and lawyers will be burger flippers, and as a result people won't be motivated to go into any of these fields. In Canada, the process to be a doctor is extremely complicated and hard only to keep it as some sort of private community that only the very few can become doctors, all to keep the wages abysmally high, and as a result, you end up waiting long times for appointments, and the doctors themselves are overwhelmed too. Messed up system that you better pray you never have to become its victim. In my opinion, AI should do both legal and medical work, keep some humans for decision making, and the rest of the doctors to be surgeons instead.

by cpfohl 11mo ago

throwaway290 11mo ago

this is fresh news right? a friend just used chatgpt for medical advice last week (stuffed his wound with antibiotics after motorbike crash). are you saying you completely treated the congenital issue in this timeframe?

cj 11mo ago
He’s simply saying that ChatGPT was able to point them in the right direction after 1 chat exchange, compared to doctors who couldn’t for a long time. Edit: Not saying this is the case for the person above, but one thing that might bias these observations is ChatGPT’s memory features. If you have a chat about the condition after it’s diagnosed, you can’t use the same ChatGPT account to test whether it could have diagnosed the same thing (since the chatGPT account now knows the son has a specific condition). The memory features are awesome but also sucks at the same time. I feel myself getting stuck in a personalized bubble even more so than Google.
- ninininino 11mo ago
  You can just use the wipe memory feature or if you don't trust that, then start a new account (new login creds), if you don't trust that then get a new device, cell provider/wifi, credit card, I.P, login creds etc.
  - cj 11mo ago
    Or start a “temporary” chat.
- throwaway290 11mo ago
  > He’s simply saying that ChatGPT was able to point them in the right direction after 1 chat exchange, compared to doctors who couldn’t for a long time He literally wrote that. I asked how he knows it's the right direction. it must be treatment worked. otherwise it is more or less just a hunch people go "oh yep that's definitely it" too easily. it is the problem with self diagnosing. And you didn't even notice it happened... without more info this is not evidence.
  - cpfohl 11mo ago
    We had the diagnosis before I started with the LLM. The radiology showed the problem and the surgeries worked. Down to an ultrasound a year now! We took him to our local ER, they ran tests. I gave the LLM just the symptom list that I gave to the ER initially. It replied with all the things they tested for. I gave the test results, and it suggested a short list with diagnostics that included his actual Dx and the correct way to test for it.
    - throwaway290 11mo ago
      That's great that it worked so quickly too (and you could arrange surgery on such short notice). I'm sure more people with same issue may benefit from more details?
      - cpfohl 11mo ago
        As it's my son's health issues, not my own, I'm going to preserve his privacy until he can consent to sharing in...8 years.
        throwaway290 11mo ago
        Apparently this news is just that it's "not allowed" by ToS, but ChatGPT will still give advice so it doesn't really matter. I thought the new model already denied you advice because you said you used an older model, but I guess it was unrelated to this news. By the way unless you used an anonymous mode I wonder how much the model knew from side channels that could contribute to suggesting correct diagnosis...
- cpfohl 11mo ago
  This was before I started using it as anything but a toy. I had definitely not spoken about medical issues; it was on a whim.

tencentshill 11mo ago

We are all obligated to hoard as many offline AI models as possible if the larger ones are legally restricted like this.

SlavikCA 11mo ago
Google released MedGemma model: "optimized for medical text and image comprehension". I use it. Found it to be helpful.

rafaelmn 11mo ago

>After it was diagnosed I walked an older version of chat gpt through our experience and it suggested my son’s issue as a possibility along with the correct diagnostic tool in just one back and forth. Something I've noticed is that it's much easier to lead the LLM to the answer when you know where you want to go (even when the answer is factually wrong !), it doesn't have to be obvious leading but just framing the question in terms of mentioning all the symptoms you now know to be relevant in the order that's diagnosable, etc. Not saying that's the case here, you might have gotten the correct answer first try - but checking my now diagnosed gastritis I got stuff from GERD to CRC depending on which symptoms I decide to stress and which events I emphasize in the history.

schiffern 11mo ago
>checking my now diagnosed gastritis I got stuff from GERD to CRC depending on which symptoms I decide to stress and which events I emphasize in the history So... exactly the same behavior as human doctors?
- kjellsbells 11mo ago
  Exactly the same behavior as a conversation with an idealized human doctor, perhaps. One who isn't tired, bored, stressed, biased, or just overworked. The value that folks get from chatgpt for medical advice is due in large part to the unhurried pace of the interaction. Didn't get it quite right? No doctor huffing and tapping their keyboard impatiently. Just refine the prompt and try as many times as you like. For the 80s HNers out there, when I hear people talk about talking with chatgpt, Kate Bush's song A Deeper Understanding comes immediately to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeper_Understanding?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeper_Understanding?wprov=sfl...
- inglor_cz 11mo ago
  ChatGPT and similar tools hallucinate and can mislead you. Human doctors, on the other hand ... can be tired, hungover, thinking about a complicated case ahead of them, nauseous from a bad lunch, undergoing a divorce, alcoholics, depressed... We humans have a lot of failure modes.

terminalshort 11mo ago

Why are you saying we shouldn't get AI advice without a "professional", then? Why is everybody here saying "in my experience it's just as good or better, but we need rules to make people use the worse option"? I have narcolepsy and it took a dozen doctors before they got it right. AI nails the diagnosis. Everybody should be using it.

pinnochio 11mo ago
Survivorship bias.
- teitoklien 11mo ago
  Experience working with doctors a few times, and then we’ll see all the bias if one is still surviving lol. Doctors are some of the most corrupt professions who are more focused on selling drugs they get paid commission for to promote, or they obsess over tons and tons of expensive medical tests, that they themselves often know is not needed, except they ask for it, simply out of fear of courts suing them for negligence in future or because again , THEY GET A COMMISSION from the testing agencies for sending them clients. And even with all of that info, they often come out with the wrong conclusions at times. Doctors do a critically important role in our society and during covid they risked their lives for us, more than anyone else, i do not want to insult or bring down the amount of hard work doctors do for their society. But worshipping them as holier than thou gods is bullshit, that almost anyone who has spent some time with going back and forth with various doctors over the course of years will come to the conclusion of. Having an AI assistant doesnt hurt, in terms of medical hints, we need to make having Personal Responsibility popular again, in society’s obsession for making every thing “idiot proof” or “baby proof” we keep losing all sorts of useful and interesting solutions because our politicians have a strong itch to regulate anything and everything they can get their hands on, to leave a mark on society.
  - pinnochio 11mo ago
    > But worshipping them as holier than thou gods is bullshit I'd say the same about AI.

tamimio 11mo ago

That's the experience of a lot of people I know or read their stories online, but it isn't about AI bad diagnosis, it's because they know in 5 years doctors and lawyers will be burger flippers, and as a result people won't be motivated to go into any of these fields. In Canada, the process to be a doctor is extremely complicated and hard only to keep it as some sort of private community that only the very few can become doctors, all to keep the wages abysmally high, and as a result, you end up waiting long times for appointments, and the doctors themselves are overwhelmed too. Messed up system that you better pray you never have to become its victim. In my opinion, AI should do both legal and medical work, keep some humans for decision making, and the rest of the doctors to be surgeons instead.