alt Hacker NewsDr. Oz pushes AI avatars as a fix for rural health care
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So we get so worked up over this stuff, and for good reason. But personally I'm taking another stance...
let them..
It's not my choice to make someone understand what's best for an individual or as a group. Let them make these decisions, and learn for themselves. Will this cause issues where I am at risk of getting measles? Or that kids could get sick over non pasteurized milk? yes, but we're back in a place where people have to feel the pain.
That's not to judge, or belittle or put anyone down. There's people who have views and values that conflict and that's OK.. Even if it's not the best for us a whole.
Listening to DR. Oz is a path to an early paupers grave.
I wouldn’t trust “Dr” Oz to advise me on which brand of cold medicine to buy, much less the health of myself or my child.
Since I'm dealing with how good claude code is, I gave a research task to claude to help my in-laws (who are psychologists) understand the coming storm at a more visceral level.
AI produced this: https://nexivibe.com/future.mental.health.web/index.html
I can't argue with the urgency. I then had claude produce a prompt based on this that I could feed Grok as a project to do therapy, and the result was shockingly good.
Obviously, Dr. Oz is going to be a political lightning rod for some people, but if you factor that out and try using AI for therapy... this is coming. This is happening right now.
Dr. Oz is in the Epstein files.
The email he wrote in October 2019 is especially odd. He reached out to FBI wanting information on interviews of victims. FBI blew him off. (EFTA00037405) Between the lines, this really reads to me like he wants to know if anybody accused him. Someone on an internal email said not to tell Oz anything about the meeting. (EFTA00037407)
He met with Epstein on 1/1/16. (EFTA02476629) I believe the meeting was initiated by Oz.
> "AI can't read facial expressions, tone of voice, or body language," she said. "And those things matter. That's where the relationship between a patient and provider is built — in the nuance."
It's amazing how, no matter how dramatic the breakthroughs are, people will still totally fail to understand the concept and can't even extrapolate correctly to N+1.
There's absolutely nothing fundamental about current AI tech it that limits it from reading facial expressions and tone of voice and even body language to the extent it can see it. And then, already there are studies showing that patients find AI responses more empathetic than actual doctors. There's a big question whether people will accept it such empathy as genuine, but my money is on people attaching to these things like crazy.
In China, when they didn't have enough medical personnel, they sent the half-trained barefoot doctors to the rural areas to give even basic medical care. Over time they trained more and more people in allopathic medicine and increased the level of care and expertise.
Our elites care so little for us that they won't even bother to send real people, just a sop to tell us to shut up.
Expectations rise with the level of development. No excuses in America.
yikes.
I do not trust Oz et al to make this anything but an unethical grift. But Ironically we already have a lack of continuity of care, providers who are so overburdened that they cannot give any human nuance, and a complete lack of coordination across visits or diagnoses. So, America has done what it usually does; create a problem and then offer to sell the subpar solution. also, the healthcare industry has used impoverished urban areas as guinea pigs for training programs and hypothesis testing for many generations, why not the same benefit/detriment for rural America?
And you guys push LLMs as a hail all for everything, you tech fucks.
AI as a tool to make health care cheaper and more scalable is not an inherently bad idea, but I would not let these fools anywhere near it. Anything they touch is going to be a pure grift.
rural here, raised in a medical family. there is NO rural health care, bare bones self funded "clinics" with no actual doctors. they want doctors here but cant offer competitive compensation, and the governments rural devitalisation plans are working, and demograhics back this up. every few miles there is another failed back to the land dream farm, and then some giant horsey place that will be a third+ home general health care is so rotten that the people hired from India to do the work, FLY back home to India, if they need health care for themselves as it's both faster and cheaper counting all the costs. that we are tumbing towards a crunch point and have no one to blame but the victims, then thats what we will do.
The real problem was allowing the AMA to tightly control the supply of doctors for decades---that this would even be a solution to anything.
There is very real opportunism and profiteering among those advocating and providing this "solution." But they didn't create the months of waiting that normal folk have to see routine specialists or PCPs.
At the very least, they can get instructions on how to do first aid and when to go to the emergency room.
I remember talking to friends who were well-meaning but panicked about the ACA being passed because the system would be inundated with people seeking healthcare, and that it would lead to Soviet-style rationing. The rationing hasn't come from any five-year plan or the like, but simply the supply of doctors not keeping up with the demands of a growing population.