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I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

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Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#131

Post by monerozcash »

malfist wrote: post #127
monerozcash wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These days I hike a lot, I've had bullseye rashes before and the treatment is so much less worrisome than the rare possibility of developing lyme. Yeah, if you develop a rash from a tick bite that even remotely looks like it could be lyme, just go to a pet store to buy amoxicillin (you can get exactly the same stuff they give to humans) if you can't quickly find a doctor who'll take it seriously enough to immediatel…

Amoxicillin isn't the best for Lyme. It does work but it takes more and longer for it to work than doxycycline. And what you're going to pay at the pet store is going to be way more than urgent care and a human script.

Pet store antibiotics are pretty cheap in my experience, but YMMV I guess.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#132

Post by jfindper »

hiyer wrote: post #103
jfindper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. It's awful that you had a bad experience, but no. Nowhere near 70% of hospital deaths are from preventable mistakes. I would also note that in your experience, you ended up trusting a different doctor (ophthalmologist), not ChatGPT. Second opinions from other qualified professionals is a thumbs up from me.

The author doesn't say don't trust doctors or trust chatgpt. He says don't trust "a single doctor" and look for a second opinion whenever possible.

Getting a second opinion is smart! Get it from a qualified professional, not chatgpt.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#133

Post by monerozcash »

jfindper wrote: post #128
monerozcash wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people receiving life-saving medical advice from LLMs every single day. The problem isn't getting medical advice from LLMs, it's blindly trusting the medical advice a LLM gives you. You do not need to trust the LLM for it to be able to save your life, you do need to trust the LLM for it to be able to harm you.

> There are people receiving life-saving medical advice from LLMs every single day. Is this just a vibe thing or has anyone actually done some statistics on this? Sounds like it's something you assume is true solely based on the fact that you personally feel like LLMs are good at medical advice.

>Is this just a vibe thing or has anyone actually done some statistics on this?

There's extensive reporting on this from pretty decent news sources, and countless forum posts from seemingly real non-throwaway accounts which aren't otherwise spamming LLM content.

> based on the fact that you personally feel like LLMs are good at medical advice.

No, I don't think that's the case. LLMs sometimes give good advice, the bad advice isn't harmful unless you blindly trust the advice.

People go to a doctor or two, their symptoms are dismissed as [insert very common problem here], ask LLM, receive advice suggesting that [uncommon condition] also fits the symptoms and then take that to a doctor.

This also happens using Google every day. LLMs aren't special, they just make searching the internet a bit easier.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#134

Post by takinola »

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

More generally don't try to be your own doctor. Whether you're using LLMs or just searching the web for symptoms, it's way too easy for an untrained person to get way off track. If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school. Otherwise talk to someone who did.

The real decision is whether medical advice from an LLM is better than no medical advice at all.

I would always prefer a doctor’s advice over consulting an LLM. However, if I was stuck in Antarctica with no ability to consult a doctor, I would definitely use an LLM. The problem is there are people in society that are effectively isolated from medical care (cost, access, etc) so they might as well be in Antarctica, as far as medical care is concerned.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#135

Post by sethammons »

fwiw, my wife had been to a dozen doctors over the years. Every single one of them got it wrong. ChatGPT, 3.5, took the symptoms and spat out the potential issue: multiple sclerosis (MS). And, yeah. That was it. When directed to look that direction, she was quickly confirmed via MRI.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#136

Post by hansmayer »

monerozcash wrote: post #122
foobarbecue wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my feeling, but I have a friend who is a MD and an enthusiastic supporter of people getting medical info from LLMs...

Getting medical info from LLMs is great and can save your life. Blindly trusting medical info from LLMs is idiotic and can kill you. Pretty much any tool will be dangerous if misused.

> Getting medical info from LLMs is great and can save your life.

No its not - LLMs are not medical experts. Nor are they experts for pretty much anything. They just extrapolate statistically the next token. If you fed them anti-vaxer information, theyd start recommending you to not get vaccinated so as to not obtain autism or something like that. We should not use them as experts on anything, much less so for medical information.

On the other hand, if you want to use them to generate large amounts of text and images, sure go do that. They can do that I guess.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#137

Post by monerozcash »

hansmayer wrote: post #136
monerozcash wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting medical info from LLMs is great and can save your life. Blindly trusting medical info from LLMs is idiotic and can kill you. Pretty much any tool will be dangerous if misused.

> Getting medical info from LLMs is great and can save your life. No its not - LLMs are not medical experts. Nor are they experts for pretty much anything. They just extrapolate statistically the next token. If you fed them anti-vaxer information, theyd start recommending you to not get vaccinated so as to not obtain autism or something like that. We should not use them as experts on anything, much less so for medica…

> No its not - LLMs are not medical experts

So what? That does not mean they're not very good at searching the internet and often provide useful information.

> If you fed them anti-vaxer information, theyd start recommending you to not get vaccinated so as to not obtain autism or something like that.

I specifically addressed this in the very short comment you're replying to, but I will repeat:

>Blindly trusting medical info from LLMs is idiotic and can kill you.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#138

Post by morshu9001 »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #92

I've tried removing my post because the comment section here has become a platform for AI enthusiasts to spread dangerous medical misinformation. As HN does not really care about user privacy, I am unable to actually delete it. I renamed the post to [Removed], but it appears the admins are uninterested in respecting the intent of this, and renamed the post back to its original title. Moral of the story kids: don't po…

You deleted the original article already. HN isn't letting you delete other people's discussion. Frankly that's WAI.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#139

Post by red-iron-pine »

takinola wrote: post #134
SoftTalker wrote: post #4

More generally don't try to be your own doctor. Whether you're using LLMs or just searching the web for symptoms, it's way too easy for an untrained person to get way off track. If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school. Otherwise talk to someone who did.

The real decision is whether medical advice from an LLM is better than no medical advice at all. I would always prefer a doctor’s advice over consulting an LLM. However, if I was stuck in Antarctica with no ability to consult a doctor, I would definitely use an LLM. The problem is there are people in society that are effectively isolated from medical care (cost, access, etc) so they might as well be in Antarctica, as…

if you have connectivity and an advanced enough system to hit an LLM from antarctica, you can probably just call a doctor.

Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week

#140

Post by red-iron-pine »

mttch wrote: post #37

In the UK we have the 111 NHS non-emergency telephone service - they don’t give medical advice but triage you based on your symptoms. Either a doctor will call you back, they will tell you to go the non-urgent care centre or A&E (ER) immediately.

similar approach in my canadian province.

call in to 811, get some pre-screening. usually it's "go to the urgent care" or "sleep it off", but it's a good sanity check, and you usually get treated better then you say "811 told me to come in ASAP"

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