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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   32185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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I wasn’t being sarcastic. It’s strange, I guess this part was confusing to you?

Users here like to argue this point but many of you are programmers - the exact demographic to be able to use and exploit these LLMs.

The implication I’ll unpack for you - if you’re a programmer you live a bubble. Coding seems extremely important and useful - and since one of the few things LLM can do well is coding, this makes it seem very productive and useful! Hence programmers are very biased on this topic. You don’t really see how unpragmatic LLMs are for any other occupation

I'm a doctor. I think LLMs are very "pragmatic" or at least immensely useful for my profession. They could do much more if regulatory systems allowed them to.

Are there any models that you would consider generally good? I have a Claude-based personal assistant that I'm working on but medical queries don't work out well. The positivity bias is too strong - it tends to agree and amplify, which isn't good in medical care!

I've come around to using Gemini 2.5 Pro for almost everything, Grok 3 being a close contender. As a cheapskate who does his best to avoid paying, Claude is borderline unusable for me, and it's not like paying users get generous usage limits. There's GPT-4o, which I use far less often since the first 2 came out.

IMO, all models are perfectly acceptable for medical purposes. Gemini 2.5 is the best on benchmarks, and I think I can tell the difference that makes. Its personality is not as congenial as Claude or GPT-4o (and I'm a little fond of Grok, even if it tries too hard).

Regarding sycophancy, I have noted a strong tendency for 2.5 Pro to pushback on claims it disagrees with, and it asks for clarification in a manner that's entirely appropriate while also being happy to operate off what it thinks the user intends.

I can't overstate this. I find myself convincing it quite often. It's raised concerns that would have been very valid had it not been for information it didn't have access to. An example is when it threw up clear alarm at a sudden (positive) discrepancy in my net pay off uploaded bank statements, urging me to contact payroll to make sure that my taxes were in order. It didn't know that I'd received backpay, and was relieved to hear it.

TLDR: Anything works fine. Gemini 2.5 Pro works best. And it's free.

Im speaking in generalities

I work in the health system and we STILL rely on a paper healthcare chart.

In 2025

Holy shit. In the U.S? I know of a few but very very few at this point.

Even the VA figured this shit out.

Nah I live in the cold land of “free” healthcare

My man, I was using paper charts in the NHS till about a month ago. Thankfully they fixed the wifi, and we're living in the scifi future of 1999 now.

That is not a significant barrier. Get someone to transcribe them, they've probably got better handwriting than a doctor.

I’m trying to tell you that the adoption of new tech is so glacial that it won’t matter. You’ll be dead before AI gets used productively in medicine

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