311–320 of 500 posts
As a 60yo I developed my own AI medical assistant [1] and I've used it extensively for many conditions, I can't be happier. After analyzing some lab tests it even recommended a marker that was not considered first by the doctor, so yes, it won't replace doctors but it is a very helpful tool for self-diagnosing simple conditions and second opinions. [1] https://mediconsulta.net (DeepSeek)
As a 60yo I developed my own AI medical assistant [1] and I've used it extensively for many conditions, I can't be happier. After analyzing some lab tests it even recommended a marker that was not considered first by the doctor, so yes, it won't replace doctors but it is a very helpful tool for self-diagnosing simple conditions and second opinions. [1] https://mediconsulta.net (DeepSeek)
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I believe in modern medicine but I lost some faith in the American institutions around it when I "diagnosed" my partner with the correct disease that the first rheumatologist dismissed and told them to just stretch. It was officially diagnosed years later, and we lost a lot of time because of it.
I’m so sorry. American medical institutions are a very long way from the best way to practice medicine.
And which institutions are best?
I'd be very very hesitant to trust studies like this. It's very easy to mess up these benchmarks. See for example this recent paper where AI managed to beat radiologists on interpreting x-rays... when the AI didn't even have access to the x-rays: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.21687 (on a pre existing "large scale visual question answering benchmark for generalist chest x-ray understanding" that wasn't intentionally mess…
Why? Simply because there is a plethora of "studies" from the AI industry benchmaxing? Or that every single time the outcome is in favor of the tools then when actually checking the methodology they are comparing apple and oranges? Truly I don't get your skepticism. /s obviously.
Jokes aside whenever I read about such a study from a field that is NOT mine I try to get the opinion of an actual expert. They actually know the realistic context that typically make the study crumble under proper scrutiny.
> "An AI and a pair of human doctors were each given the same standard electronic health record to read" This is handicapping the human doctors abilities. There is a lot more information a human doctor can gather even with a brief observation of the patient.
You could say the same about the Ai. Ai is incredibly well suited for extracting knowledge through chats. In this regard. A doctor also just have 15 minutes for an interview. An Ai can be with the patient for days leading up to a consultation. So if we remove this "handicap" this Ai will likely really start to win.
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> we must assume that the best AI models (especially ones focusing solely in the medical field) would largely beat large majority of humans (aka doctors), if we already have this assumption for software engineers You first have to assume this for software engineers. Not everyone agree with that (note: that doesn't mean the same people don't agree that AI is not _useful_). AIs still have a ton of issues that would be…
Doctors do that all the time though. That's why drugs are dispensed by a pharmacist who double checks it.
At one place, we had a QA lead who was burned so many times she would insist that she will find the time to do at least a full smoke test even if we promised it was a small contained change in the frontend. I have no idea how she found the time because she wore multiple hats.
I thought websites have to make it as easy to give consent as withdraw consent[1] - and here one cannot withdraw consent without an extra step (subscribing).
Instead I would expect access to the article, with same ads as in the “user consented” path, just not personalized.
[1]: “The GDPR is specific that consent must be as 'easy to withdraw as to give'”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie
> "An AI and a pair of human doctors were each given the same standard electronic health record to read" This is handicapping the human doctors abilities. There is a lot more information a human doctor can gather even with a brief observation of the patient.
When I got tired of this I just lied to the emergency line and was admitted to hospital based on my lie, and they discovered a brain tumor which explained the other stuff.
I WISH I could just use AI.
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I agree with you on this specific study, however, I can't really wrap my head about the fact that doctors will be better than AI models on the long-run. After all, medicine is all about knowledge, experience and intelligence (maybe "pattern recognition"), all those, we must assume that the best AI models (especially ones focusing solely in the medical field) would largely beat large majority of humans (aka doctors),…
> we must assume that the best AI models (especially ones focusing solely in the medical field) would largely beat large majority of humans (aka doctors), if we already have this assumption for software engineers You first have to assume this for software engineers. Not everyone agree with that (note: that doesn't mean the same people don't agree that AI is not _useful_). AIs still have a ton of issues that would be…
Besides; this article was about diagnosis not prescribing. It's pretty obvious, I think, that diagnosis is one area where AI will perform extremely well in the long run.
I think there are two metrics; the first is outright misdiagnosis, which studies put between 5 and 8% in US/Europe. That's a meaningful number to tackle.
Secondly; overdiagnosis. Where a Dr says on balance it could be X on a difficult to diagnose but dangerous problem (usually cancer). The impact of overdiagnosis is significant in terms of resources, mental health, cost etc.
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> After all, medicine is all about knowledge, experience and intelligence So is... everything? LLMs are really really good at knowledge. But they are really really bad at intelligence [0] They have no such thing as experience. Do not fool yourself, intelligence and knowledge are not the same thing. It is extremely easy to conflate the two and we're extremely biased to because the two typically strongly correlate. But…
> [0] before someone responds "there's no definition of intelligence", don't be stupid. Way to subdue discussion - complaining about replies before you get any. But you're wrong, or rather it's irrelevant whether something has intelligence or not, if it is effectively diagnosing your illness from scans or hunting you with drones as you scuttle in and out of caves. It's good enough for purpose, whether it conforms to…
> Way to subdue discussion
> or rather it's irrelevant whether something has intelligence or not
> whether it conforms to your academic definition of "having intelligence" or not.