Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse • Hacker News Board

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#211

Post by fn-mote » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #65

munk-a wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the folks here on HN are dealing with customer feedback in systems automation in one form or another - it's pretty unavoidable in this age of LLM trendiness. The customers of healthcare (in both private and publicly funded systems) are the patients. So while the term might not be super natural it's an understandable one to use.

Patients are not customers, or at least I don’t want to live in a world where patients are considered customers. Customers and vendors are usually more of a symmetric relationship: price transparency, alternatives, lack of urgency. These are all characteristics of transactions that healthcare often lacks.

The customer has more power than a patient.

I definitely want to be a customer.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#212

Post by kennywinker » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:43 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #198

fn-mote wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI-powered alerts from their apple watches that detected cardiac events Surely these are “good old-fashioned AI” (statistical learning) and not LLM, though. I just want to be clear that the “medical LLM” tools are the new ones, and the Apple Watch alerts aren’t.

LLMs are statistical learning. GOFAI is symbolic, rules-based stuff, expert systems and that.

There is still a categorical difference between how they are being used. Specifically analytic vs generative. Generative AI (LLMs and image generators) are the ones people have issues with - pretty much nobody cares about ML processing for analysis.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#213

Post by kennywinker » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:44 AM UTC

granzymes wrote: post #205

LoganDark wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's machine learning, which has overlap with AI but is not completely equivalent.

The “overlap” is that all machine learning is AI, but not all AI is machine learning.

At this point AI is a marketing term not an actual category

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#214

Post by romanhounds » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #199

romanhounds wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

will you give up identity politics for the deplorables vote?

> will you give up identity politics for the deplorables vote? That phrase gets used a lot, I'm curious what you mean by that. If you mean "woke", then you're probably missing the irony of how that is actually used politically. Based on the phrasing of your question, I'm guessing you might have an irony deficiency. But please go on. Political discussion here is frowned upon because it usually devolves into partisan n…

identity politics is used as a distraction to class politics, if you materially make peoples lives better they will vote for you.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#215

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:46 AM UTC

Quekid5 wrote: post #173

markdown wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the hospital is owned by private equity, the owners definitely think of the patients as customers. Doctors and nurses shouldn't, but the owners do.

Lack of empathy tends to trickle down, alas.

I’m sure the AI won’t show that.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#216

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:48 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #149

lostlogin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By a knowledgeable/skilled person who listens to the call. (Which the AI solution provides). Are you saying that the AI is the same as a knowledgable/skilled person?

No - read my original comment.

> By a knowledgeable/skilled person who listens to the call. (Which the AI solution provides).

Sorry, I parsed this as claiming ‘the AI solution provides a quality of results the same as a human.’

Are you actually saying that the AI solution should provide a human with the calls it identifies as needing a human review?

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#217

Post by defrost » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

romanhounds wrote: post #214

pstuart wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will you give up identity politics for the deplorables vote? That phrase gets used a lot, I'm curious what you mean by that. If you mean "woke", then you're probably missing the irony of how that is actually used politically. Based on the phrasing of your question, I'm guessing you might have an irony deficiency. But please go on. Political discussion here is frowned upon because it usually devolves into partisan n…

identity politics is used as a distraction to class politics, if you materially make peoples lives better they will vote for you.

So, who in the US is actually using identity politics as a distraction?

I ask because as an outsider I overwhelmingly see US identity politics issues being raised by the new "Republicans" and to a lesser degree by the old Republicans.

> if you materially make peoples lives better they will vote for you.

This doesn't explain the last election in the slightest unless relaxed to "if you pinky promise to materially make peoples lives better..."

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#218

Post by thorbutt » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:53 AM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #213

granzymes wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “overlap” is that all machine learning is AI, but not all AI is machine learning.

At this point AI is a marketing term not an actual category

See: Samsung selling "AI" vacuum cleaners and washing machines

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#219

Post by 27183 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:56 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #9

There's a reason that among Americans, telekinesis and creationism are more mainstream positions than sloptimism. About 14% of Americans think AI is moving us towards a better world. About 17% are creationists. About 26% believe in Telekinesis.

All of those beliefs seem approximately equally regressive? What percentage of people think there's something non-physical that actually exists? I'd put them in the same padded cell as the rest of those clowns.

Re: Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse

#220

Post by johnnyanmac » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 2:57 AM UTC

isityettime wrote: post #190

derekdahmer wrote: post #115

I RFTA and the majority of the complaints are about call center metrics and the pressure to ration care. These are real concerns about misuse of metrics, but not AI. The AI empathy thing was a 2024 pilot that was discontinued. FWIW my wife works for Kaiser and finds a lot of value in the the medical LLM tools available to her. She tells me being able to do live translation, summarize notes, and quickly get comprehens…

Things like this are (sadly) common (and age-old) problems with automation and computerization. (For a vivid account of this phenomenon, check out the novel _Close to the Machine_, by Ellen Ullman.) As executives and analysts increasingly use the "AI" craze to push automation and computerization (and layoffs) generally , even aside from AI proper, it should not be surprising that the individuals and groups opposing t…

>The lack of precision in language here sucks.

It's a feature. Or at least, a perk. If they want to claim this new shiny rock is AI and people buy it, then of course it's in their best interest to keep the black box mysterious. Being subterfuge for muddying the discourse of critique is just a nice side bonus.