Comment by xpe

2 years ago

(I'll bring a conciliatory bias to this conversation. Under what interpretations might the ^ and ^^ comments be saying mostly the same thing?)

>> My hope is the AI+sensors ushers in the era of truely personalized medicine.

> AI can lie.

The first hope is compatible with the second fact. It is possible that carefully _designed_ AI systems (that have different architectures than 'vanilla' LLMs) can serve a useful purpose here.

There is a lot of interesting conversation to be had in 'the conciliatory zone', leaving plenty of opportunities to disagree when it is warranted.

> Basically, you want to replace statistics ("large enough samples will average out variation") with AI. I'm afraid that's cargo cult instead of science.

There is a whole lot of _assuming_ going on here, followed by a mischaracterization. This is not the paragon of curious conversation.

I don't expect perfection, but I still think we should try. I don't mean to pick on any one person; I do this sometimes as well. I'm just pointing it out because, well, it is right here, right now.

Think about the impact on the system. Seeing the anti-pattern above too often can drive people away. I think it does. Who remains? People who somehow aren't bothered by it? Downselecting in this way is self-defeating.

I'm probably just as frustrated as anyone here (if not more) regarding (i) the state of medicine, (ii) perceptions of what current AI technology can do, and (iii) many other serious problems. But we shouldn't not let this frustration bleed into our personal interactions.

It is both a waste of our time and (worse) damaging to the community ethos when we take an unnecessarily pessimistic view of _each other_. Some online fora are 'good enough' (though flawed) to help us connect and build bridges as _people_. It doesn't help when we fall into the all-too-common pattern of sniping without asking questions first and clarifying meaning.