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A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

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Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#61
post #22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving down the cost of manufacturing because of process standardization and automation brought down the cost of consumer goods, and labor's value. And quality as well.

Not really, the quality we're able to produce at scale is the best it's ever been in the world. The "quality of everything has been in decline" isn't due to advances in manufacturing but the economic factors that are present even without those advances. Rapid inflation over a relatively short period of time has forced everyone to desperately try and maintain close to their pre-inflation prices because workers didn't…

This is so hard to vocalize, but yes, exactly. Prices aren’t coming down. That’s largely not something that happens. Instead, wages are supposed to increase in response.

You might see little blips around major recessions, but prices go up, driven by inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL

Fortunately the rate of change of CPI appears to have cooled off, but the best scenario is for it to track with the previous historical slope, which means prices are staying where they are and increasing at “comfortable” rates again.

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#62

Everyone should be terrified. The "promise" of AI is the following: remove any kind of remaining communication between humans, because that is "inefficient", and replace it with an AI that will mediate all human interactions (in business and even in other areas). In a few years, AIs trained by big corps will run the show and humans will be required to interface with them to do anything of value. Similar to what they…

> remove any kind of remaining communication between humans, because that is "inefficient", and replace it with an AI that will mediate all human interactions

I imagine that call center operators are salivating at this prospect. They can have an AI customers can yell at and it will calmly and cheerfully tell them (in a more "human-esque" way) to try rebooting their modem again, or visit the website to view their bill.

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#63
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't trust humans" but you can trust a non deterministic black box to take their place?

Humans already are non-deterministic black boxes, so I'm not sure I would use that comparison.

For me they are more a gray box. That is why publicity and propaganda work.

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#64
> As a nurse, you end up relying on intuition a lot. It’s in the way a patient says something, or just a feeling you get from how they look

There is a longstanding tension between those who believe human intuition is trustworthy, and the “checklist manifesto” folks. Personally I want room for both, there are plenty of cases where for example the nurse/doctor’s intuition fails and they forget to ask about travel or outdoor activities and miss some obvious tropical disease, or something situational like Lyme’s.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in a hospital and the human touch is really invaluable. My hope is that AI can displace the busywork and leave nurses more time to do the actual care.

But a concrete example of the thing an AI will struggle with is looking at the overlapping pain med schedule, spotting that the patient has not been exhibiting or complaining of pain, and delaying one med a couple hours from the scheduled time to make the night schedule more pleasant for the patient. It’s hard to quantify the tradeoffs here! (Maybe you could argue the patient should be given a digital menu to request this kind of thing…)

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#65

Everyone should be terrified. The "promise" of AI is the following: remove any kind of remaining communication between humans, because that is "inefficient", and replace it with an AI that will mediate all human interactions (in business and even in other areas). In a few years, AIs trained by big corps will run the show and humans will be required to interface with them to do anything of value. Similar to what they…

It's true, but corporate policies and insurance are already like "slow AI"

They remove most of what's real in interactions

I remember going for a routine checkup at Kaiser, and the doctor was literally checking boxes on her computer terminal, rather than looking, talking, listening.

I dropped them after that -- it was pointless for me to go

It seems like there are tons of procedures that already have to be followed, with little agency for doctors

I've talked to doctors who say "well the insurance company say I should prescribe this before that, even if the other thing would be simpler". Even super highly paid doctors are sometimes just "following the rules"

And more importantly they do NOT always understand the reasons for the rules. They just have to follow them

---

To the people wondering about the "AI alignment problem" -- we're probably not going to solve that, because we failed to solve the easier "corporate alignment problem"

It's a necessary prerequisite, but not sufficient, because AIs take corporate resources to create

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#66
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't trust humans" but you can trust a non deterministic black box to take their place?

Are you suggesting humans are deterministic?

A little bit, we are. With some degree of confidence, given the incentives you can predict the output.

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#67
post #54

This article feels “ripped from today’s headlines” for me, as my mother-in-law was recently in the ICU after a fall that caused head trauma. The level of AI-driven automated decision-making is unsettling, especially as it seems to allow large organizations to deflect accountability—“See? The AI made us do it!” I’m not entirely sure what guided her care—or lack thereof—but, as someone who frequently works in healthcar…

Side note: I tried the same questions with some local LLMs I’m running at home—unfortunately, they’re nowhere near as good or useful. I hope local models improve quickly, so we’re not left depending on the good graces of big LLM(tm).

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#68
post #54

This article feels “ripped from today’s headlines” for me, as my mother-in-law was recently in the ICU after a fall that caused head trauma. The level of AI-driven automated decision-making is unsettling, especially as it seems to allow large organizations to deflect accountability—“See? The AI made us do it!” I’m not entirely sure what guided her care—or lack thereof—but, as someone who frequently works in healthcar…

The article feels very much like a union rep fighting automation. If AI is provably worse, we should see that come up in the AI making 'bad calls' vs the human team. You would even see affects on health outcomes.

One place I'd really like an all seeing eye AI overlord is in nursing home care. I have seen family members lie in filth with clear signs of an infection. I am confident, if we hadn't visited, seen this, and got her out of there she would have died there, years before her time.

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#69

Everyone should be terrified. The "promise" of AI is the following: remove any kind of remaining communication between humans, because that is "inefficient", and replace it with an AI that will mediate all human interactions (in business and even in other areas). In a few years, AIs trained by big corps will run the show and humans will be required to interface with them to do anything of value. Similar to what they…

Counterpoint: AI is actually better at communication than most humans. In fact, even an ancient (in relative terms) article found that AI bots have better bedside manner than human doctors: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/28/ai-has-be... Today, I expect it's not even very close. I also believe that AI diagnostics are on average more accurate than the mean human doctor's diagnostic efforts -- and can b…

I agree with you. The only issue is training AI to be better and better. Much more efficient.

Re: A neurology ICU nurse on AI in hospitals

#70
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, the quality we're able to produce at scale is the best it's ever been in the world. The "quality of everything has been in decline" isn't due to advances in manufacturing but the economic factors that are present even without those advances. Rapid inflation over a relatively short period of time has forced everyone to desperately try and maintain close to their pre-inflation prices because workers didn't…

This is so hard to vocalize, but yes, exactly. Prices aren’t coming down. That’s largely not something that happens. Instead, wages are supposed to increase in response. You might see little blips around major recessions, but prices go up, driven by inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL Fortunately the rate of change of CPI appears to have cooled off, but the best scenario is for it to track with the…

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