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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

#341

Post by kgeist »

A few years ago (before the AI craze), I was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis. I had a chronic cough, and an outsourced radiologist at a clinic found signs of tuberculosis. The findings were sent to the city's tuberculosis hospital, as required by the country's law. The doctors there took the radiologist's conclusion at face value and required me to stay at their hospital for at least 8 months under a strict, prison-like regime. There was no option to say no, because I was considered some kind of biohazard, and by law I had to comply.

Before I was admitted, I quickly found another radiologist, who diagnosed pneumonia instead. I sent his report to the chief doctor at the tuberculosis hospital, and after some deliberation they concluded that the original reading was wrong. Turns out the doctors there can't read scans at all and just believe whatever a radiologist says...

The funny thing is, they had already officially put me on the tuberculosis register and didn't want to admit they had made a mistake. So instead, they simply gave me another paper saying that I had been cured of tuberculosis by them... in 7 days. I'm probably the only person in the country to defeat tuberculosis in a week :)

So if you don't trust the radiologist/doctor, maybe find another doctor if you can afford it? You can compare their conclusions and see if they match. Two unrelated doctors or radiologists saying the same thing is probably about as close to the truth as you're going to get. I'm not sure though whether I should trust AI or humans more. AI can hallucinate, but I've been misdiagnosed by humans so many times too...

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

#343

Post by tsoukase »

chasebank wrote: post #311
tsoukase wrote: post #207

Medical opinion will remain one of the last frontiers of LLMs. There so many critical factors that are inappropriate for them. They cannot perform a clinical exam, they have to collect the needed exams and most importantly a life might be at stake (OK, you cannot die from a shoulder problem but you can become handicapped forever). All that said, as a doctor I am totally open and even happy when a patient refers they…

Do you think you would ever use LLMs in tandem in your practice to help diagnose and treat?

I often ask, usually Gemini, at a medium abstraction level (not general What the diagnosis is, neither specific like What this high serum Ca means). The answers are correct but not enough and ready for consumption without doctor guidance.

A cardiologist friend goes in deep discussions with a specialised model and he is amazed.

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

#344

Post by fhdkweig »

goodpoint wrote: post #307
aetherson wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing the training method with the internal process. If I had you repeatedly attempt to learn how to make believable completions of partial documents about a given topic, you would eventually learn things about that topic and could use your knowledge to create more believable completions of documents about that topic.

believable != true

This is what Stephen Colbert called "truthiness". People want to believe what they feel is true even if it is directly contradicted by evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

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

#345

Post by mrlongroots »

b800h wrote: post #335
piterrro wrote: post #295

It funny to see the community here expects the human body to be treated like a deterministic function: for input X expect output Y - and that transfers to diagnosis - people expect to receive the same diagnosis from different specialists for the same issue. Given human body complexity, the diagnosis is a compound output of the experience, knowledge gained throughout the career and diagnosis methods/equipment, the tit…

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that medicine is inherently fallible and therefore AI is more likely to make a good diagnosis - particularly a cluster of specialist AIs?

Yeah I think the OP is muddling the point by conflating "physician's version of the diagnosis" with "The Diagnosis".

There is absolutely one "The Diagnosis". Human body is a machine, albeit a very complex one, and all measurement sources have noise. But they are all measuring one reality, and if there is a problem, there should be one explanation that all measurements align with. They can be noisy but can never be conflicting (instrument error notwithstanding).

Physicians' ability to arrive at "The Diagnosis" would vary, but it does not mean one does not exist. I am not sure if characterizing human body as derministic or not is relevant here.

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

#346

Post by Shitty-kitty »

ForceBru wrote: post #318
operatingthetan wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're mildly obfuscating the issues at hand by diving too deeply into philosophical questions. It's quite simple, the agency that the LLM appears to have is actually your own. Without a prompt an LLM does nothing. It has no thoughts between prompts about you or your problems.

Yes, I'm diving a bit too deeply because I don't really know what "thinking" is and therefore I don't understand how we can so confidently say that LLMs don't think, even though they definitely LOOK like they're thinking. They even have a "Thinking" section in their responses! If I say that a rock doesn't think, it's pretty convincing: does a rock look like it's thinking? No — it doesn't even do anything! But an LLM…

We don't know what thinking is but pattern matching is definitely a big part of it. That's why people see Jesus on a piece of burnt toast.

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

#347

Post by operatingthetan »

ForceBru wrote: post #318
operatingthetan wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're mildly obfuscating the issues at hand by diving too deeply into philosophical questions. It's quite simple, the agency that the LLM appears to have is actually your own. Without a prompt an LLM does nothing. It has no thoughts between prompts about you or your problems.

Yes, I'm diving a bit too deeply because I don't really know what "thinking" is and therefore I don't understand how we can so confidently say that LLMs don't think, even though they definitely LOOK like they're thinking. They even have a "Thinking" section in their responses! If I say that a rock doesn't think, it's pretty convincing: does a rock look like it's thinking? No — it doesn't even do anything! But an LLM…

I want to say I really appreciate that you are putting a lot of thought into this, you certainly have interesting concepts here. However I think it seems a bit far off from the discussion I'm trying to have, and I do not have the bandwidth to fully understand and charitably respond to your points.

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

#348

Post by geraneum »

> There's something incredibly peaceful about being in the hands of an expert you trust. You don't have to worry anymore and can let them guide you through the process. AI can absolutely shatter that feeling in an uncomfortable way

It's always something along the lines of incredibly peaceful, insanely powerful, extremely interesting, also scary and uncomfortable meanwhile feel like magical super powers and science fiction.

I'm telling you... words have lost meaning.

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

#349

Post by cadamsdotcom »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #287
Aurornis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have multiple LLM subscriptions at any given time, plus an array of local models. When I ask a question outside of my domain of expertise I like to ask all of the LLMs I have access to. I also create separate sessions and ask the same question multiple ways. It’s revealing to see how many different and contradictory answers I get, most of which are presented confidently. The last time I ran a medical question throu…

Have you ever let the LLMs “discuss” with each other to see if that would give better answers? You might end up with the answer from the most persuasive LLM, but you might also end up with better results. Wonder if there is a paper out there on this.

The problem with trying to write a paper is the results depend on RNG.

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

#350

Post by wwweston »

margorczynski wrote: post #195
010101010101 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd argue that AI _can_ currently provide that, but that it can't do it _reliably_, and that to non-experts it's impossible to differentiate, which makes it all the more dangerous.

Isn't that the case with human "experts"? If you had encounters with doctors, mechanics, etc. you'll know you can get a completely different diagnosis for the same problem which obviously means (in most cases) that the person you thought an expert is wrong. What is needed are studies that will take a cold look at the actual results because AI seems to be required to be perfect or it is useless. It just needs to be as…

We have systems around humans that exist to manage expertise gaps, credibility signals, and accountability. This is part of what makes humans as good as they are, along with specialized training and some measure of meritocratic selection. We license and regulate and account and litigate to make a system that responds and improves.

Some of this might be applicable to LLMs, but some isn’t and much of it would be resisted. This is one reason we’re not likely to get “as good as a human” because at some level we’re not optimizing for the outcomes; we’re optimizing for speed, convenience, some participant’s economics, and underlying beliefs.

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