So what? The average joe shouldn't be trying to diagnose people with cancer.

Healthcare is more than having medical knowledge.

Ten years ago, in France, two doctors (one in a professional setting and the other during a private consultation) asked me about a wound I had on my shoulder; obviously I couldn't identify what it was, and they offered no suggestions, so I supposed it was not something important.

It took a visit to a cardiologist—for an entirely different reason—for him to suggest that I rapidly consult a dermatologist.

It was a carcinoma, and surgery removed it. If ChatGPT had existed back then, this carcinoma would have been removed several years earlier.

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trollbridge 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This sounds like a competency problem on the part of the GPs. They’re supposed to make these calls.

	▲	devrwoody 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yet here we are

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gchamonlive 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe if chatgpt existed back then you'd have had your carcinoma extracted along with 10 other benign anomalies.

Automation doesn't make up for carelessness.

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kaikai 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Skin cancer is easily treated with excisions if it’s caught early. Better to have ten small false positives than a single miss.

	▲	gchamonlive 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even if addressing each false positive would carrying low but real risk of death or complications?

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teiferer 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. In its specific case that's quite obviously not a good example because removing benign spots isn't harmful, but overlooking malignant ones is, so there is no downside.

But if we think a little further and generalize then there is great risk (and by extension, harm) to delegate diagnosis and treatment (of health issues in general, including potentially or supposedly fatal ones) to ChatGPT and similar tech. That we'd end up with a net positive is far from obvious.

	▲	red75prime an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Obviously, error rate of ChatGPT should be measured by comparing to human diagnoses and when it plateaus, we should investigate a possibility that the number is driven mostly by human errors.
	▲	gchamonlive 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I still maintain my point that it isn't harmless to blindly address benign anomalies. Every medical procedure carries risk.