[gizmodo59]

The negative reactions here are baffling me. The fact that we can even get to say 30% with computer is amazing. So much hatred towards AI and anything from the frontier labs like OpenAI (or Goog for that matter) makes no sense.

[pinkmuffinere]

There is a lot of negativity towards AI. However, there’s also real shortcomings to the study. IMO the issue here is that the AI was given case notes for a patient, but was not shown the patient directly. This is both different than what a doctor is trained for and also unnecessarily limiting for what a doctor can do. A lot of the value doctors deliver is from talking to the patient. The headline makes it sound like AI is going to replace doctors, but it seems more like “AI can do this one niche task better than doctors can do this one niche task”. The notes being used are probably written by a doctor(s) to begin with. I think the real reward here is that the doctor+AI unit should perform better than the doctor in isolation –– in the case where a doctor would have to read case notes and make some conclusion, the doctor can now rely on AI for pretty good suggestions.

[tuananh]

> real reward here is that the doctor+AI unit should perform better than the doctor in isolation

that is true for other profession as well.

while everyone is afraid of layoff, the real question is always "employee+AI" is better than employee/AI alone or not.

[vector_spaces]

Why are you baffled? The most upvoted critical comments are mostly explaining themselves and I don't think their reasons are very technical. When the stakes are higher, we should generally be more critical, not less.

[thephyber]

That’s what they said about Enron.

Skepticism is an incredibly useful tool, even in excess.

[an0malous]

I for one am delighted for my acquaintances in the medical field with their cushy, cartel-supported salaries to feel the existential dread of AI coming for their jobs like I have

[krupan]

I'm sorry that you are feeling existential dread about your career. It could help to stop listening to the hype that the people selling AI are spewing and take a hard look at the tools themselves. Like most products, they aren't as good as the salespeople say they are. Also, take any predictions for how these products will do in the future with a huge grain of salt. Predicting the future is very difficult. It's taken us 70 years of computer and AI research and development to get to this point. It's likely that the rate of improvement will not change drastically. Yes, things are changing, but the singularity (still) is not coming tomorrow

[12345ieee]

Oh no, imagine the people that save human lives having high salaries, the horror.

If you, like me, are in the software field, know that this is likely the most comfortable job even invented by humanity, we should really be paid just above the poverty line in exchange.

[robocat]

Everyone is taught that doctors save lives.

However many others in society save lives that are not so lavishly praised or financially rewarded.

For example in New Zealand median pay for a Road Design Engineer is about $100k NZD compared to a GP (doctor) getting $240k. Plus the doctor gets paid a massive overpayment of social status.

Over a 40-year career, an average NZ GP will save 5 to 10 lives. The Road Design Engineer saves 40 to 120 lives. Road engineers in NZ prevent roughly 10x more serious injuries than they do deaths so it isn't just death stats.

Our hypothetical engineer should be paid > 10x more than the doctor on raw stats.

It gets harder when we start looking at quality of life versus raw lifetime numbers. You then need to consider the value of say entertainment (a good movie) versus the hypothtical lives saved by spending the budget elsewhere.

A game designer might be valued highly by a gamer mum, and negatively by their children and gaming widowed dad.

[an0malous]

Give me a break, most of them are glorified drug dealers. Their salaries are inflated by an artificially capped supply of doctors, at the cost of patients.

I had to leave my job this year because of burnout when the execs mandated that we use AI tools, become our own designers, PMs, and QA, and double our velocity. They run through a decision tree they leaned in residency every day and I’m learning how to do 3-4 other people’s jobs on top of whatever the new AI thing is. I was working nights and weekends while my friends in medicine are planning their 3rd vacation this year to Tuscany.