Posted by engmarketer 8 hours ago
My dog had been acting off. Wouldn’t eat, was hunched over, looked sad. We took him to a local vet who did an X-ray because they suspected a blockage. They didn’t see one, so they sent us home with standard pain meds.
Randomly, we had a dinner party that night and another vet was there. She heard the story and immediately said, “Go home right now and take your dog to an emergency vet with ultrasound.”
Turns out, at the time, most vets had been trained to use X-rays to look for blockages, but newer evidence showed X-rays were only something like 20% effective compared to ultrasound, which was closer to 95%. (forget percentages but somethign like that)
The ultrasound found an avocado pit stuck in his intestine. He had emergency surgery that night.
That chocolate chunk of an English Lab ended up living until 15, and only needed two more blockage surgeries after that...
I know doctors hate patients reading the internet, and LLMs are going to make that 1000% worse for them. But hopefully over time, we all adapt together and end up better off in the long run.
I've seen the two extremes in different countries; either they have a tendency to maximize the complexity of the medical situation, or they minimize it "Don't worry, it's just stress" - I've been to different doctors in different countries and I see a pattern based on the country and the incentive structure. In some countries, they will send you off to do a scan for the slightest malaise.
I don't think it's about quality/coverage of public healthcare (at least not on its own; I have not seen a clear pattern across this axis). I think the difference is to do with the referral system. In countries where you can't go directly to a specialist and need a referral from a General Practitioner/Physician first (I.e. in order to get a refund), you tend to get more false negatives from the GP which block you from going to the next stage "It's nothing, just stress-related." In countries were you have the option to go directly to a specialist, they tend to be much more trigger-happy in terms of giving you a full workup and GPs/Physicians will more easily refer you to a specialist.
And I feel like the attitude extends to the specialists themselves. I suppose making people go to a GP first creates a kind of efficiency and predictability which alleviates pressure to exaggerate the severity of the situation.
The areas of premature heavy interventions can be a challenge, especially where there might be room for interpretation and the medical professional didn’t share all possible options.
It’s critical to ask all professionals for all possible options and write each down as they write and explain it. No one’s perfect, and not everyone is negligent or malicious.
This single sentence provides a huge clue about what’s going on: This person’s medical team is not good. It’s not hard to get an LLM to perform better than a team that is injecting homeopathic botanical formulations and performing procedures that aren’t indicated for the condition.
I think the real takeaway from this article shouldn’t be “ChatGPT is better than doctors”. It’s a story about LLMs identifying that someone was not in good hands.
And
> They performed shockwave therapy on my shoulder
(a procedure that may not be effective, but is unlikely to cause any harm)
Its not just about LLM's being better, its about people not trusting DR any more: https://www.physiciansweekly.com/post/the-erosion-of-trust-i...
If we want to fault the article for anything it's that he didnt take that information and go get a 2nd opinion from someone who IS more informed.
That said, while I do see homeopathic stuff with that name, it's worth verifying that it isn't just a naming conflict. They're not always unique, particularly across countries, and Traumeel seems to be more of a brand than a specific thing.
AI is completely without ego, and can process all my medical records in minutes. In truth, even today, I would rather have an AI analyse my records.
It's not true that "AI makes mistakes" or "ChatGPT is sycophantic". It's just that sometimes the simulated extensions to the training material are accurate, and sometimes they're not.
A family member has cancer and we treat chatgpt as part of the team (our doctor's words). I ingest everything into it, work with it to make a good report. Then at the next visit we review it.
This gives you the best of both worlds. You get peace of mind and the doctor explains why and how the agent was right or wrong.
Twice now we've caught consequential mistakes (wrong pain medication and incorrect notation of the exact mutation that he has). Which have made a difference to his quality of life and treatment path.
Most of what the doctors have said is in line with the agent but when there have been disagreements they've been very reasonable. Sometimes the doctors have gone with the agent's version sometimes they've explained why that's inappropriate.
> AI can absolutely shatter that feeling in an uncomfortable way ...
I see this as a field report in a time of fundamental transition, from a world without AI, to one that accommodates/incorporates AI. For this to happen, AI will need to become more trustworthy. As for the U.S. medical system, it can't get much worse.
I recently had a similar experience (meaning walking a fence between old and new methods), where I was told I could get an appointment with a human medical practitioner in nine months. So, to resolve my anxiety I consulted AI and got an instant diagnosis, one that was later confirmed by the inaccessible medics.
Being a born skeptic I wasn't going to act on AI's diagnosis, I just wanted to know what was going on, resolve some uncertainty. Another advantage: an AI chatbot doesn't say, "Wait, you're on Medicare? Hmm. See you in nine months."
Don't take this as an endorsement of AI's diagnostic abilities -- it's way too soon for that. In my case it was a slam dunk, about a condition I knew nothing about.