[raincole]

No? It's exactly how everything worked so far.

Live performance (orchestra and operas) were for rich only. Beautiful paintings were for the noble and churches. Porcelain was something needed to be imported from another continent. Tropical fruits were so expensive that people rented them.

Now we have the affordable versions of them for everyone in developed countries, and the middle class in developing ones. Yes, often we just got inferior, machine-made or digital copies, but I personally prefer something inferior than nothing.

[krapp]

You're comparing the value of AI versus a human being with the knowledge and skill necessary to earn a medical degree to the value of hearing Mozart live or seeing the Mona Lisa in person to Youtube and JPEGs, as an argument in favor of AI?

>but I personally prefer something inferior than nothing.

Say that again when your AI physician prescribes you the wrong medication because it hallucinated your medical history.

[raincole]

> You're comparing the value of AI versus a human being with the knowledge and skill necessary to earn a medical degree to the value of hearing Mozart live or seeing the Mona Lisa in person to Youtube and JPEGs, as an argument in favor of AI?

Yes, and I think it's a pretty good analogy.

> Say that again when your AI physician prescribes you the wrong medication because it hallucinated your medical history.

I personally prefer something inferior than nothing. I just said it again.

When your human doctor prescribes the wrong medication, would you reach the conclusion that the world would be better without human doctors?

The fact is simple. Professional diagnosing is such a scarce resource that people buy over-the-counter drugs all the time. It's not AI vs doctors; it's AI vs no doctor.

[krapp]

When a human doctor prescribes the wrong medication, it's a mistake. One doesn't conclude the world would be better without human doctors because human beings are capable of thought, memory, perception, awareness, and when they don't make mistakes - and most don't most of the time - it's the result of training and talent.

Meanwhile, AIs don't possess anything akin to thought, memory, perception or awareness. They simply link text tokens stochastically. When an AI makes a mistake, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do, because AIs have no concept of "reality" or "truth." Tell an AI to prescribe medication, it has no idea what "medication" is, or what a human is. When an AI doesn't make a mistake, it's entirely by coincidence. Yet humans are so hardwired with paredolia and gaslit by years of science fiction that such a simple hat trick leads people to want to trust their entire lives to these things.

>The fact is simple. Professional diagnosing is such a scarce resource that people buy over-the-counter drugs all the time. It's not AI vs doctors; it's AI vs no doctor.

That's not a fact, it's your opinion, and I'm assuming you've got some interest in a startup along these lines or something, because I honestly cannot fathom your rationale otherwise. You're either shockingly naive or else you have a financial stake in putting poor people's lives in the hands of machines that can't even be trusted to count the number of fingers on a human hand.

I have no doubt the future you want is going to happen, and I have no doubt we're all going to regret it. At least I'm old enough that I'll probably be dead before the last real human doctor is put out to pasture.

[ben_w]

> Say that again when your AI physician prescribes you the wrong medication because it hallucinated your medical history.

You say that like humans don't err, either though malice or madness or mistake.

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766403612/doctor-gets-40-year...

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/18/us/virginia-former-ob-gyn...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/25/1088902...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/22/lucy-letby-w...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

[dagw]

AI physician prescribes you the wrong medication because it hallucinated your medical history.

The big question is will that happen more or less often than it does with human doctor? Human doctors 'hallucinate' stuff all the time, due to lack of sleep, lack of time, lack of education and/or just not caring enough to pay proper attention to what they are doing.

[krapp]

>Human doctors 'hallucinate' stuff all the time, due to lack of sleep, lack of time, lack of education and/or just not caring enough to pay proper attention to what they are doing.

No, they don't. If that happened anywhere near all the time, we would never have given up alchemy and bloodletting, because there would be no reason to trust medicine at all, and yet it works overwhelmingly well most of the time for most people. Meanwhile, AIs hallucinate by design.