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https://x.com/mark_k/status/1996857239311634793
Mark Kretschmann @mark_k
Man has his life saved by Grok from @xAI
after a ruptured appendix:
"I’m 49. 2025 has been the best year of my life… until two nights ago.
For 24 straight hours I had constant, razor-blade-level pain in my stomach. Couldn’t lie flat, could only get minor relief sitting on the floor with knees to chest. No fever, no blood, nothing dramatic on the outside.
Went to the ER once, doctor pressed my belly, said it was soft, gave me Somac (acid blocker) and sent me home. Pain never dropped below an 8/10. Came home, opened a year-long chat I have with Grok, described everything. Grok immediately flagged perforated ulcer or atypical appendicitis, told me the exact red-flag pattern I was describing, and basically said “go back right now and ask for a CT.”
I copied the symptoms and the reasoning, walked back to the ER, told them: “This is what I’m experiencing, this is why I think it’s serious, I want a CT.”
They did it. Appendix was inflamed and close to rupturing. Six-hour laparoscopic surgery later, it’s out. Pain is 100 % gone. I woke up laughing about anesthesia. I’m alive and healed because an AI recognized the pattern when the first exam missed it, and because I had the exact words to make them take me seriously the second time.
If you’re reading this while curled up in pain, googling symptoms at 3 a.m., and someone already sent you home once, please don’t wait."
December 5, 2025

Average laparoscopic appendectomy takes about 1 hr. I think his ER doc might have been an idiot, or the patient doesn’t know how to explain his symptoms.
I had acute appendicitis long time ago. There was no MRI or CT. Docs knew right away. But yes, AI can help. But it is supposed to only use info that is on the net. It can not replace an experienced, cautious, conscientious doctors judgement.
If a patient walks into an ER repeating AI stuff, the attending would be suspicious of hypochondriosis, or Munchausen syndrome, or drug (opiates, or benzos) seeking behaviour. IMHO

“Went to the ER once, doctor pressed my belly, said it was soft, gave me Somac (acid blocker) and sent me home”

Decades ago at age 11, I was hit by a car. My left knee got the worst of it. I couldnt stand or bend my knee. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital wherw they xrayed my leg. They declared it was only a bad sprain and would heal itself in a week at the most and sent me home.

A week went by and the condition of my knee disnt improve. Still couldnt stand on my leg or bend at the knee. So, my mother took me to a specialist in a tiny office inside an apartment building. He xrayed my leg and showed me the xray which clearly showed a break in my knee. He put my leg in a cast and told me to come back in one month to have the cast removed. Thats what I did. And my knee worked again.

Why was it those doctors and technicians at the hospital couldnt see the break in my leg in an xray when i, a little 11 year old uneducated kid could?

AI always needs a “human in the loop” - to identify anything that AI may have missed.

Artificial “intelligence” is a misnomer - it is primarily classification and categorization and pattern-matching. This, the cloud-based massive models can do very very well, but there are potential limitations that need a human catch — the example I give is of fly-by-wire airplanes. We still have need a human pilot for the cases where the computer doesn’t know what to do as the potential variables are too high.