Posted on 02/18/2024 6:02:04 PM PST by Red Badger
"THE CART IS SO FAR AHEAD OF THE HORSE, IT’S LIKE HOW DO WE REIN IT BACK IN WITHOUT CAREENING OVER THE RAVINE?"
You may remember a series of lawyers who have attempted to use AI tools in court — and were subsequently embarrassed and sanctioned when the chatbots screwed up, sometimes even inventing plausible-sounding cases that didn't actually exist.
So consider this: how would you feel if your doctor did the same thing, feeding your symptoms into an AI system to diagnose what's wrong with you?
That's a looming question, Politico reports in a fascinating story, that's currently stressing out regulators. And it has an alarming immediacy, because according to Politico's reporting doctors are already using unregulated and little-tested AI tools to aid in diagnosing patients — so this isn't some hypothetical conversation about a far-off future, but an already-happening-right-now phenomenon that could well be just one malpractice suit away from becoming a major medical and regulatory scandal.
"The cart is so far ahead of the horse, it’s like how do we rein it back in without careening over the ravine?" University of California public health researcher San Diego John Ayers asked Politico.
The obvious answer is that that the tech needs regulation, a concept that's got nominal buy-in from every stakeholder from the White House to OpenAI.
The problem, of course, is that actually doing so is way more easily said than done. As Politico points out, one key issue is that most medical products — think pharmaceuticals, surgery equipment, or other healthcare devices — can be approved once and generally trusted to keep working the same way for an indefinite period.
Not so with AI models, which are constantly in flux as their creators tweak them and add more data, meaning that an AI that gives a perfectly fine diagnosis one day might give a poor one after routine changes. And remember that a core reality of machine learning systems is that even their creators struggle to explain exactly how they work.
Government regulators like the FDA, Politico points out, are already spread thin to the breaking point. Asking them to create and maintain workflows to test medical AI systems on an ongoing basis would require politically impossible amounts of funding. So if these AI systems are already making inroads into regular medical practice, who's going to watch over them?
One idea, the outlet reports, is that medical schools and academic health centers could create labs that would constantly audit the performance of AI health care tools.
But even that idea involves a bit of hand-waving. Where would all those resources come from? And would the interactions between the patient populations at those mostly urban and affluent institutions accurately reflect the way AI would work in different and more challenged communities?
It's possible, in the long view, that AI could turn into an incredible boon for the medical system. Tech leaders certainly love to lean into that possibilty; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for instance, has publicly mused that future AI could provide high-quality medical advice to people who can't afford doctors.
Here in the present, though, the messy forays of AI into the medical system highlight just how uncomfortable certain realities of the tech are going to be — even in settings that are literally life or death.
It depends on what kind of ai it is. I built expert systems. Traditionally, classic expert systems can diagnose but they are only “experts” because of the rules experts have explicitly programmed into them, not to learn or make connections that aren’t already programmed in. If they have any speculation capability its programmed in, they dont adapt on the fly.
Carl’s JR. Get it right. Might try some Brando, it’s got electrolytes.
I’ve been going to Dr. Alexa for years when I’m sick. LOL!
My Mother always goes to dr. Internet and is convinced she has whatever that spits out.
Note to doctors: And this is the thanks you get for crawling in bed with Deep State.
Now you know how the rest of us feel.
Welcome to the party, pals.
I forgot about him! (And, really, the whole series)
It would have been a great final episode to have him pushing the VAX to a dead crew, floating endlessly through space - “Just ONE more booster, Captain Janeway…”
"Regulators see new opportunities to control medical industry by claiming that doctors are abusing AI diagnosis tools."
AI is a tool, not an expert diagnostician. Any doctor who would proceed to treat a patient solely on an AI system diagnosis has bigger problems than just his AI system.
Sooooo...... are doctors nowadays too stupid to have any critical thinking skills? How about conferencing with each other or it that too hard to do? Nooooo.... let’s all jump on the AI train and let some program that some yahoo somewhere designed and let it determine what the prognosis needs to be.
We’re surrounded by idiots apparently.
Sorry, I haven’t seen that movie in years. One burger joint is like the other.
“Regulators” (i.e., unelected bureaucrats) become “alarmed” whenever their power and authority to boss others around is threatened. Power over others is most often the primary — if not the sole — reason for their existence.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I know people who do that. As for my comment, I was in moron mode clowning around when I made it. LOL.
Oh I got your joke! My mom is dead serious! 😆
Yikes! Yeah! I know people who got to the internet first.
“Right, kick ass. Well, don’t want to sound like a dick or nothin’, but, ah... it says on your chart that you’re ____ed up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your s___’s all retarded. What I’d do, is just like... like... you know, like, you know what I mean, like...”
Expert systems are what the name implies. They use the accumulated knowledge and experience of experts in the field to build a huge, reliable database that others in the field can use to tap into the accumulated knowledge of the real experts. Expert systems are not something new.
I’m not worried about my doctors logging into Chat GPT to ask what it thinks they should do.
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