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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33461 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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It might be right 99% of the time, or even 99.99%, but like self driving cars this is exactly the kind of case where being good but not quite as good as a human is really dangerous.

Is getting things right 99.99%, or even 99% of the time not quite as good as a human doctor, rather than much better than a human doctor? I honestly don't know, and I'm not even sure how to quantify something like this to make like-for-like measurements. But surely at some % rate of success, the LLM would be getting things right at a rate better than could be expected of a typical (or even nth percentile) human doctor.

Which is scary in its own way. An LLM's "thought process" is currently completely unknowable, unlike that of a human doctor. So the types of mistakes it makes are likely to be more mysterious. Yet if it makes fewer mistakes and/or those mistakes are, on net, less harmful/unhealthy, then would it be our moral obligation to use those LLMs over doctors?

You know the one single artifact in the known universe that resembles an LLM the most?

The human brain. Another inscrutable black box for all practical purposes.

Sure, humans will give you a plausible-sounding answer when asked to explain their actions, but the current consensus as far as I'm aware is that those are almost entirely post-hoc responses, a nice-sounding package for the consumption of other humans than an accurate depiction of internal deliberations. Humans are constantly rationalizing, it takes a great deal of training to suppress those tendencies.

You know how we deal with this in practise? By simply asking the person to justify their thoughts. And it is entirely possible to ask the same thing of an LLM, the answers in both situations bear about as much relation to the truth of how they actually came to said conclusion!

then would it be our moral obligation to use those LLMs over doctors?

Only if you are a strict utilitarian which the vast majority of people are not.

Even then it might not in many cases, since there could be other benefits to having human doctors aside from the ability to provide diagnoses (e.g. human interaction would probably reduce anxiety about whatever illnesses and diagnoses and treatments are occurring).

I was thinking in % as accurate as a human, but didn't say that. I'll correct my original post.

I was also assuming it wouldn't be as good as a human, because of course a general model wouldn't accidentally be better than a specialist... Or would it?

I don't think it would be that hard to devise an experiment to get at least a rough idea of it's capabilities. Get some doctors, maybe professors, to devise questions of the sort OP was generating, present them to LLMs and real doctors (and maybe non-doctors with Google for an extra point of comparison), then have the professors grade the answers blind. I recall people giving LLMs math problems in this way, but I don't know if experiments have been performed with any rigor.

To your final point: what is the purpose of a doctor? Is it to heal at all costs, or is it to make people feel better? Many people go to doctors seeking specific prescription medication as a goal, when they could cure their ailment in a better but more laborious way. Some of them don't even have an ailment and only desire the effect of the meds. Many people also have procedures performed which physically make them less healthy, but fulfill their desires.

So, what should an LLM say to these people? "Don't take the pills, exercise" or "don't have surgery, improve your social life?"

I suppose it's not a new problem, but it does move the power and responsibility. Who is it moving to though?

If it interests you, GPT-4 successfully passed the USMLE, a pretty difficult exam that is intended to be a benchmark for the minimum level of competence a doctor needs to be able to practise. I'd say that counts for a lot.

I've thrown GPT 3.5 at a significant number of medical professionals, since I have several in my close and extended family. And even that antiquated model was sufficient to impress them, so I think the bar was already beaten before 4 showed up!

Just for the record, self made human is a real doctor, or a good enough liar to convincingly pass for one. His op is basically him starting your test and being blown away by the initial results.

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