by liberal japonicus
I’m subjecting y’all to a McDreamy quote, rather than point you to the latest David Brooks outrage (tentatively titled It’s funny what gets left out), or the Adam Tooze discussion of Fed Chair replacement candidate (tentative title Sauve qui peut!), here’s something a little less dire: This Hard Fork interview about AI usage in medicine with A.I. researcher Dr. Adam Rodman. He notes that:
AI and medicine has gone from well depending on how you measure it, it’s probably the fastest adopted medical technology of all time. We went from this being super novel, almost no one used AI tools to this being a routine part of most doctor’s weekly practice.
Being a techophile who wants to still believe that technology can do some good, this was fun to listen to, though dark clouds are in the background, with some hospitals having actual patient data being plugged in (to facilitate billing, doncha know). Ruh-roh, Reorge! I do like Rodman’s dividing usages into green, yellow and red light uses and I need to recast that explanation for my students.
Anyway, interesting times.
Discussion on “ChatGPT For Clinicians” and other AI medical applications.
OpenAI Releases ChatGPT For Clinicians
I’m fine with medical personnel using AI to maybe catch a possible diagnosis that they missed. I am definitely not fine with AI diagnosis without serious human review.
At this point, AI (which mostly is LLM rather than true AI) is a fad which simply isn’t ready for prime time. Unfortunately, I expect it to require a couple of really ugly disasters to inject some reality into the discussion.
I recall a visit to Kaiser back in the 90s sometime when the nurse was asking questions from the computer display and entering answers during the initial screening. She told me Kaiser was using it because the rules-based system was better at putting together a set of symptoms and asking diagnostic questions that would eliminate unusual but serious problems.
As for AI and my personal contribution to saving lives, let me know when ChatGPT can donate a pint of low-titer O+ whole blood. Or even the hundredth donor who comes in because “ChatGPT made such a compelling argument that here I am. Bring on the needle!”