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Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

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31–40 of 69 posts

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#31
I mean this in the nicest way possible.

But if someone dies because this thing hallucinates their reporting - would you feel any sense of culpability?

“GPL says no warranty”

“People need to double check LLM output”

“You’re holding it wrong”

I really don’t know if we, collectively as a civilization, should be willing to accept this kind of hand-waving when it comes to creating things like this. Sure, tools make mistakes or people misinterpret reports without the help of LLMs - but LLMs are just on a whole other level where the mistakes are just part of how these things work from a fundamental level.

I don’t even trust AI scribes at my doctors office to transcribe my appointment due to errors. There is no way in hell I would ever use something like this that could just straight up lie about something that kills me if I get it wrong.

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#33
post #7

The risk to benefits ratio of introducing a language model to interpret so clear signals is nowhere near justified. Monitoring and analytics is important, but it is a solved problem. A language model will only be able to hallucinate about the relationship between meals and glycemic response. At best it does no harm, at worst it can directly misinform.

That's just risk/benefit to the user. As the developer, I'd be concerned that publicly distributing and marketing this, even with a GPL "no warranty" license and even free to the user, is illegal.

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is completely the opposite, of using LLMs to pattern match and cast diagnostic nets. Is your perspective based on, say, opinionated principle?, or experience? The benefits are enormous. The risks; What risks? No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so.

> No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so. You 1000% don't work with the general public in a tech way.

"Baseline adult competence" was load-bearing there.

This is not an app for the general public.

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is completely the opposite, of using LLMs to pattern match and cast diagnostic nets. Is your perspective based on, say, opinionated principle?, or experience? The benefits are enormous. The risks; What risks? No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so.

I think you're being too optimistic about your fellow humans' judgement. "Death by GPS" is a quite common occurrence: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13550...

Type 1 diabetes with the sensors and pump technology that this software being presented here fits to is not Everyman Joe stuff. Someone who can set this up and get this going is already burdened with the kind of analysis that the app can assist with.

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#36
Really nice of you to share this, well done!

About the risks, managing type 1 diabetes is exhausting, and most people will still sanitycheck the output alongside the hundreds of treatment decisions they make every day. That doesn’t change the fact that tools like this can nudge you to notice and look into patterns or things that needs attention.

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is completely the opposite, of using LLMs to pattern match and cast diagnostic nets. Is your perspective based on, say, opinionated principle?, or experience? The benefits are enormous. The risks; What risks? No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so.

> No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so. if you can't trust this thing then what is it doing? the implication that people that trust this software do not have adult competency is also confusing. > Is your perspective based on, say, opinionated principle?, or experience? your perspective is solely based on recent trauma so I don…

Don't trust the thing. That's not what it's for.

Don't do as I say. I'm just a rando from the Internet.

Don't do as the author of the posted software does. Don't do what the software tells you either. But the software can certainly build an informative perspective and suggest patterns and movements in an exquisitely complex disease. Managing T1D with a pump is exhausting.

Second, re. "your perspective is solely based on recent trauma so I don't know if it is more reliable in any capacity"

This kind of statement is far beyond anything bounded by the self-respect of a balanced adult. What the fuck, and who are you?

My ex-fiancée almost died in 2020. We lost an unborn child in IVF due to grave neglect on behalf of healthcare who missed the glaringly obvious Type 1 diabetes she had; They never once checked her blood sugar. You know what I did? I read the literature. I read medicine, I read molecular biology, I read neuroimmunobiology, I read about the placenta and fetal development.

I stood by my fiancée and carried her by hand back to health. She recovered faster than the endocrinologists expected. Her pregnancy was exemplary, fullly intact placental vitals out to 38.5 weeks. Healthcare is in such a bad state that I was forced to interject and argue coolly and adamantly with doctors on several occasions about potentially severe mistakes they were about to make. EVERY SINGLE TIME when I interceded, it was confirmed correct by a second opinion from a senior doctor.

I don't come here speaking from trauma. I come here speaking from grim and serious and confirmed lived experience of stepping in and caring, without any margin for error. Know how you do that? With extreme humility and the utmost care.

Who are you to speak to me like that; I can tell that you know not at all who I am or what I have been tasked with in this life, because then you would not. talk. to me. this way. Okay?

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#38
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is completely the opposite, of using LLMs to pattern match and cast diagnostic nets. Is your perspective based on, say, opinionated principle?, or experience? The benefits are enormous. The risks; What risks? No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so.

> The risks; What risks? No diabetic with baseline adult competence is going to drive their insulin-delivery vehicle off a cliff because some app said so. My local physician says otherwise, with respect to facebook posts about dosages. I'm convinced the same applies to LLM generated content with respect to people blindly following the computer.

I ask for your understanding in that I chose to have "baseline adult competence" highly load-bearing in my comment. This does not include people who have only such poor judgement to guide them that they use Facebook posts as input to managing their T1D pump/sensor-based management.

It is entirely possible to beneficially and safely use software like the that which is the topic of the post.

Re: Show HN: GlycemicGPT – Open-source AI-powered diabetes management

#40
I don't think that LLMs are trustworthy companions in managing a complex metabolic disease like diabetes - especially if you deviate (ever so slightly) from the norm (very lean, very active, strict diet, etc.)!

I'm a T1D myself and like to experiment with ChatGPT (or Opus). My experiences are mixed

LLMs are overly cautious when it comes to correcting with insulin. They regularly advise against correcting before going to bed, even if this means that my blood glucose remains above 140 mg/dl for the whole night.

I am following a low to medium carb diet (I am using Fiasp as my fast acting insulin. Typically, I inject around 1 to 4 IUs of Fiasp. Its glucose-lowering effect typically lasts for roughly 2-3 hours. Therefore, I know that it is safe to re-inject after three hours without risking insulin stacking. But ChatGPT regularly advises against that and wants me to wait another 1-2 hours.

I am not against automating diabetes management. In fact, I really appreciate projects that help with that. But I don't consider LLMs to be helpful in this regard. Their combination of training data bias, liability aversion, lack of context, and one-size-fits-all thinking disqualifies them from such tasks.

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