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My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

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Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#81
post #41

I'm reminded of the monologue from Terminator 2: > Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop, it would never leave him... it would always be there. And it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him, or say it couldn't spend time with him because it was too busy. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over th…

But the top of their game includes them make things up and getting things wrong. They always give their best, but they always include mistakes. It's a different trust proposition to a human.

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#82

I and many of my friends have used ChatGPT extremely effectively to diagnose medical issues. In fact, I would say that ChatGPT is better than most doctors because most doctors don't actually listen to you. ChatGPT took the time to ask me questions and based on my answers, narrowed down a particularly scary diagnosis and gave excellent instructions on how to get to a local hospital in a foreign country, what to ask fo…

You may have done so inadvertently. With the transition to doc-in-the-box urgent care with NPs with inconsistent training and massive caseloads... your provider is often using ChatGPT.

I caught one when i ask ChatGPT something, and then went to urgent case. I told my story, they left, came back and essentially read back exactly what ChatGPT told me.

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#83
post #55
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. You can change your doctor, and get one that listens to you - you can't change the fact that ChatGPT has no skin in the game - no reputation, no hippocratic oath, no fiscal/legal responsibility. Some people have had miracles with Facebook groups, or WebMD, but that doesn't change where the role of a doctor is or mean that you should be using those things for medical advice as opposed to something that all…

In countries with public healthcare + doctor shortages (e.g. Canada), good luck even getting a family doctor, let alone having a request to switch you family doctor "when you already have one!" get taken seriously. Everyone I know just goes to walk-in clinics / urgent-care centres. And neither of those options give doctors any "skin in the game." Or any opportunities for follow-up. Or any ongoing context for evaluati…

The US has the same issue.

Because the republican party turned out to be a bunch of fascist fucks, there's no real critique of Obamacare. One of the big changes with the ACA is that it allowed medical networks to turn into regional cartels. Most regions have 2-3 medical networks, who are gobbled up all of the medical practices and closed many.

Most of the private general practices have been bought up, consolidated to giant practices, and doctors paid to quit and replaced by other providers at half the cost. Specialty practices are being swept up by PE.

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#84
Relevant:

The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond by Peter Lee (Microsoft Research) - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-ai-...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited by Peter Lee (Microsoft Research) - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/story/the-ai-revolu...

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#85

> she said she was aware that DeepSeek had given her contradictory advice. She understood that chatbots were trained on data from across the internet, she told me, and did not represent an absolute truth or superhuman authority With highly lucid people like the author's mom I'm not too worried about Dr. Deepseek. I'm actually incredibly bullish on the fact that AI models are, as the article describes, superhumanly em…

> and unbelievably knowledgeable

They are knowledgeable in that so much information sits in their repository.

But less than perfect application of that information combined with the appearance of always perfect confidence can lead to problems.

I treat them like that one person in the office who always espouses alternate theories - trust it as far as I can verify it. This can be very handy for finding new paths of inquiry though!

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#86
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. You can change your doctor, and get one that listens to you - you can't change the fact that ChatGPT has no skin in the game - no reputation, no hippocratic oath, no fiscal/legal responsibility. Some people have had miracles with Facebook groups, or WebMD, but that doesn't change where the role of a doctor is or mean that you should be using those things for medical advice as opposed to something that all…

Doctors have no skin in the game too. Our society is built on the illusion of 'skin in the game' of professionals like doctors and lawyers (and to a lesser extent, engineers), but it's still an illusion.

Engineers to a _lesser_ extent? Maybe software engineers, but for every other engineer, theres very tangible results and they absolutely get sued when things go wrong, and the governing bodies strip engineers of their licenses for malpractice all the time.

Source: I used to be a geotechnical engineer and left it because of the ridiculous personal risk you take on for the salary you get.

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#87
The basic calculus is that if you decrease the number of minutes of doctor time enough, it doesn't really matter if they are 100% correct (0 minutes of 100% correct = 0 advice).

Patients are substituting 15 minutes of 100% correct information for 2 hours of 80%, or whatever percentage the AIs are.

Additionally, they're pretty much free at the moment and available 24/7 with no travel required.

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#88

> she said she was aware that DeepSeek had given her contradictory advice. She understood that chatbots were trained on data from across the internet, she told me, and did not represent an absolute truth or superhuman authority With highly lucid people like the author's mom I'm not too worried about Dr. Deepseek. I'm actually incredibly bullish on the fact that AI models are, as the article describes, superhumanly em…

> They are infinitely patient, infinitely available, and unbelievably knowledgeable, it really is miraculous. This is a strange way to talk about a computer program following its programming. I see no miracle here.

Chatting with an LLM resembles chatting with a person.

A human might be "empathetic", "infinitely patient, infinitely available". And (say) a book or a calculator is infinitely available. -- When chatting with an LLM, you get an interface that's more personable than a calculator without being less available.

I know the LLM is predicting text, & outputting whatever is most convincing. But it's still tempting to say "thank you" after the LLM generates a response which I found helpful.

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#89

I and many of my friends have used ChatGPT extremely effectively to diagnose medical issues. In fact, I would say that ChatGPT is better than most doctors because most doctors don't actually listen to you. ChatGPT took the time to ask me questions and based on my answers, narrowed down a particularly scary diagnosis and gave excellent instructions on how to get to a local hospital in a foreign country, what to ask fo…

Did you read the article?

Re: My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)

#90
The problem with any patient to doctor or patient to Dr. Claude is that intentionally or not the patient will lie or misinterpret their condition, to the point of not describing it properly, risking getting a bad diagnosis or suggestion with a chatbot. In a classical medical scenario this can still happen but there is the chance that the medical professional could see through to the actual problem. There is a reason why even in real life it's sometimes best to get a second medical opinion.
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