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I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

antoine.fi

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Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#111

Post by hawkice »

quacked wrote: post #101

The thing that annoys me about AI discourse is that AI is a mathematical technique of rapidly increasing efficacy, and yet everyone personifies it. It would help if every time someone said "AI" they supplemented "a mathematical method where extensions onto a very large corpus of information are statistically simulated". It's not true that "AI makes mistakes" or "ChatGPT is sycophantic". It's just that sometimes the s…

I think this draws too strong a line between the matrix-math core and the harness that uses it. Those harnesses undoubtedly were built with purpose and the systems fail to achieve that goal. Common usage says the the DMV can make mistakes, like any systems, despite the DMV itself not being a person (and it is common to allege large organizations make mistakes even when no specific individual is making an identifiable mistake). This isn't person-language it's systems/purpose-language.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#113

Post by suttontom »

rafterydj wrote: post #15

I feel like I'm going nuts. There are other commenters saying this is a good practice they've also done for other injuries. You are saying you are an actual radiologist and immediately clock the problems with its advice. I have seen this pattern over and over again. Anytime someone is an actual expert at anything, AI output appears insufficient or incomplete or outright misleading. It is only when you do not know wha…

Your instinct is correct, and in a lot of cases it's true. However, I've heard from enough doctors by now (a cardiologist, psychiatrist, and epidemiologist/former physician) that they use medical LLMs and find them extremely helpful, mostly as a way to either bring up knowledge they'd forgotten about or as a way to learn something new and then verify it. I'm extremely skeptical about LLMs in general and the connection to Gell-Mann Amnesia is apt, but I wouldn't necessarily write them off completely like that. There are experts using the models that find them genuinely helpful in their field.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#114

Post by d1sxeyes »

drw85 wrote: post #25
weatherlite wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nightmare because they're always right and the A.I second guessing is always wrong, or because they just don't like to be second guessed?

Nightmare because the AI is just generating a random text that fits the question.

Not quite. An LLM generates text that would likely follow. The sky is… “blue”. A patient in pain with a bone protruding from their shin has a… “broken leg”.

The more training data, the more questions it can answer with a reasonable degree of probability of accuracy.

Throwing away a potentially useful analysis just because it’s probabilistic seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#115

Post by yread »

lucfranken wrote: post #74

Why wouldn’t you as a doctor by standard run the images through a certified compliant LLM? The actual cost won’t be it and then you can see if you get any new ideas from it. See if it’s just wrong or that it spotted a little detail you missed? The LLM doesn’t need to be leading or whatever but then you can have a conversation with the patient. If their ChatGPT reports has differences it can be analyzed as well. It fe…

Because they might bias you. And because you have your own brain, training and experience

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#116

Post by rasmus1610 »

As a radiologist I have found Claude and ChatGPT to be absolutely terrible at MRI and I would not trust it one bit. It has its merits if you need to research stuff that is more text based, but radiological images is just something that they cannot interpret good enough (yet)

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#117

Post by AceJohnny2 »

> There's something incredibly peaceful about being in the hands of an expert you trust. [...] AI can absolutely shatter that feeling in an uncomfortable way [...] but I don't know if I can fully trust AI either.

This really is key. We know we can't trust the AI, but at the same time we're also more comfortable asking the AI for clarifications or confronting it. Not having a time-bound appointment or paying by the hour helps a lot. But even then, more information doesn't necessarily help!

I once brought my 11-year-old car, a Civic with 150k miles, to multiple garages. I figured I'd play the "second opinion" game to correlate what the garages recommended to decide on what needed to be done...

I got 3 completely unrelated recommendations, including one that I knew was invalid! I felt worse off than when I started!

The solution to uncertain information isn't more information, which the AI can certainly provide, it's better information, and AI cannot currently provide that.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#118

Post by rvnx »

js2 wrote: post #54
ricardobayes wrote: post #7

That might be doctors new nightmare: people who second guess everything with AI. Previously it was "google your symptoms".

The NYT did this profile a while back: "Ben Riley was already writing about the risks of chatbots when his dad started trusting A.I. over his doctor." The dad was a retired neuroscientist who delayed cancer treatment against medical advice because he was certain he had been misdiagnosed based on his own research that he did with the help of A.I. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/well/ai-chatbots-cancer.h... There's…

The context is very important: decades of a poorly-diagnosed chronic illness had left him deeply distrustful of the medical system.

This is the real root issue.

At 75 years old, he was stubborn. Is that reasonable ? Yes, perfectly. Could he have been right since the beginning ? Certainly. Did he deny evidence ? Yes.

Zero doubt that he was intelligent, everything points toward that direction, but that doesn't make a person less stubborn, because accepting the evidence, is also accepting that you were wrong if you initially postured yourself as adversarial instead of cooperative.

He would have read Wikipedia, scientific papers, etc, even without AI.

He did not want to be convinced. It works both ways:

https://www.foxnews.com/health/woman-says-chatgpt-saved-her-...

or

https://www.today.com/health/mom-chatgpt-diagnosis-pain-rcna...

Nonetheless, someone very smart, just didn't want to move from his position.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#119

Post by quacked »

hawkice wrote: post #111
quacked wrote: post #101

The thing that annoys me about AI discourse is that AI is a mathematical technique of rapidly increasing efficacy, and yet everyone personifies it. It would help if every time someone said "AI" they supplemented "a mathematical method where extensions onto a very large corpus of information are statistically simulated". It's not true that "AI makes mistakes" or "ChatGPT is sycophantic". It's just that sometimes the s…

I think this draws too strong a line between the matrix-math core and the harness that uses it. Those harnesses undoubtedly were built with purpose and the systems fail to achieve that goal. Common usage says the the DMV can make mistakes, like any systems, despite the DMV itself not being a person (and it is common to allege large organizations make mistakes even when no specific individual is making an identifiable…

I understand and somewhat agree with your point, and might have phrased my comment differently. I think my main point is that experts aren't always going to beat "a dynamically simulated extension onto the training material". Often they will, maybe even usually, but sometimes they won't, and I feel like the people in this thread insisting that the experts will always know better are thinking about a competition between experts and a crazy robot instead of a competition between experts and math.

Re: I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI

#120

Post by sxg »

foobarian wrote: post #75
sxg wrote: post #6

I'm a radiologist but can't really weigh in without seeing the full 3D MRI dataset. Regarding this point: > They performed shockwave therapy on my shoulder even though a recent clinical practice guideline says clinicians should not use or recommend shockwave therapy for rotator-cuff tendinopathy without calcification; I was told during ultrasound that there was no calcification. Ultrasound isn't a great way to assess…

Huh, I'm reading and looking up these words you guys are saying and it is starting to look exactly like the symptoms I have been having with my own right shoulder! I feel like a giant gaping rabbit hole just opened up next to my desk.

We're discussing calcific tendinitis (https://radiopaedia.org/articles/calcific-tendinitis?lang=us). If you think you have it, you can see a doctor and consider shoulder radiographs to start.
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