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I understand the sentiment but I think this is too far of a pushback. Restricting access to information even though it may be inaccurate or misleading isn’t the right answer. AI is a tool. I’d wager, force a prompt to specifically be visible whenever subjects break that. Essentially the cigerette equivelant “THIS PRODUCT KILLS YOU” but something like “AI RESPONSES TO MEDICAL INFORMATION SHOULD NOT BE TREATED AS ACCURATE.”
I feel like this logic should of banned search engines since they could provide links to sites with misinformation.
AI shouldn’t be an excuse to take a job, it can be a tool but that’s it
In what way is this restricting information? AI usually just summarizes info that was already trivially searchable
Add edibility of wild plants to the list please
Maybe I’m just ignorant about this, but it feels a bit “gatekeepy” to outlaw answering questions about the law itself. Like… so I can’t use an LLM to help do taxes? Or if I’m served a confusing legal document, I have to pay an expensive attorney to understand the legalese? I can’t even just get a rough idea from an LLM first?
EDIT: Also I’ve literally had a professional accountant send me a ChatGPT conversation they had because they didn’t know tax law well enough. I feel like if anything that should be outlawed. Professionals should actually have to know shit and know how to research primary sources.
I guess it’s like banning loan sharks. Sure some people could only.get loans through them because banks were racist or whatever. But it’s objectively bad for everyone using it mainly because when it’s bad its really really bad.
I would say its to protect people, if you ask a LLM for a legal answer and trust it, then you could get into legal trouble when it turns out to be wrong.
Not only are LLMs wrong like ~1/10th of the time (for the more advanced ones) but law is also an area where there is black and white rules, but also there is interpretation of some aspects.
Some things are set in stone and some are about understanding the intention of the law and being able to back that up in a court if it was challenged.Do you want the public trusting a LLM that says “oh yes you can claim a tax deduction for an Xbox because its for stress relief related to your job” and then you get whacked with a fine for incorrectly filing your tax.
Using a LLM to help your draft an email to your uncle = low risk. Using a LLM to help you decide if you actually need a medical procedure your doctor has reccomended = high risk.
If that was the logic we were using then Wikipedia shouldn’t be allowed to have articles on health and law either. WebMD shouldn’t have ever been legal either.
Obviously, the benefits to having that information available outweigh the hypothetical negatives. Even with them being incorrect, partial and easy to draw invalid conclusions from, having the information be freely and readily accessible is better for everyone.
I think the distinction is that looking up wikipedia or any other website that appears to have topics of information you can learn from is different from asking a tailored answer to your specific query.
One feels like more like research to improve your understanding, but you know you would have to go to a professional to ask specific questions around your circumstances.
And the other feels like your own ‘personal professional’ that answers all your little specific questions, but is really just a complex algorithm trying to make you happy and doesnt know if is telling you right or wrong, only that it shouldnt say it doesnt know.A program that can be very confidently wrong while giving people advice that can mess up their life (healthcare, finiancial, legal advice, etc) could benefit some, but will ruin others make it not worth the risk?
A program that can be very confidently wrong while giving people advice that can mess up their life
Literally WebMD.
I think there’s an assumption that professionals are always correct. They are not. Professionals are also heavily trained to “[try] to make you happy and doesnt know if [they are] telling you right or wrong, only that [they] shouldnt say [they don’t] know.”
You’re also neglecting how bad health care access, and legal etc., is. Especially in countries like the USA where access to healthcare is financially gated and increasing extraction makes “go[ing] to a professional” not possible unless you wait >6 months to go somewhere that’s a >3hr commute from where you live. WebMD, Wikipedia and chatbots can help to decide whether the >$1,000 and 7hr professional consultation is worth it, and if so be more informed going in so that the time is better spent.
That being said, poor healthcare can absolutely have worse outcomes than no healthcare. I do believe that is a minority of situations, however I also lack any hard evidence to really back that up. Do you have any?
WebMD is just a website with information pages on health topics, not a program or custom response, is it not?
I think that there is a future that it may be a reasonable first step for people with restricted access barriers, but at this stage its too much of the wild west to be using it for these higher level cases.
But regardless i dont have specific information to present you, i woild argue the amount of people that have committ suicide after interacting with LLMs rather than seeing a mental health professional would be a fairly relevant example though.
I thought the issue you had was with the information itself. Why does it “being a program” matter? That said, it is; “symptom checker” specifically and “page rank” more generally.
its too much of the wild west
And? There seems to be this assumption that “wild West” == bad/dangerous/scary/harmful. The modern Internet is certainly far less of the “wild West” it used to be. I would also argue it is also far more dangerous, harmful and nefarious than the “wild West” web.
the amount of people that have committ suicide after interacting with LLMs rather than seeing a mental health professional would be a fairly relevant example though.
Anecdotes aren’t useless, but they need to be contextualized. Is it higher than the baseline? Is it greater then those who didn’t commit suicide because when the mental health institutions failed them they at least had some sort of backup?
Navigating healthcare while dealing with a mental health issues is a paradox. Is the damage caused greater than the damage prevented from allowing access to a tool that can help lower that barrier to entry?
Looking at general trends I find that the harms outweighing the benefits very hard to believe. Do you have anything non-anecdotal, on that specific point, to back it up?
Look mate, all i am saying is that cutting edge technology shouldnt be used for critical areas until it is proven safe, i really am not invested enough in the cenversation to continue this thread, i support the descision being made to restrict LLM use for these areas at this point in time.
LLMs have been linked to mental health impacts, specifically demonstrably in suicide cases (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots) and i do believe in a lot of these cases the LLMs caused greater harm than would have been presented without the LLM interference, and definitely less harm than if these people saw a human professional to talk about their issues rather than a program. Yes there is a cost of seeing a health professional but this is not a case of ‘somethings better than nothing’.
law in itself is very gatekeepy - you have to learn the “correct” way to interpret the words and then get certified for it.
More like you as an average person have no idea what it’s hallucinating and what is the truth and may end up in jail or the hospital like the cases that are starting to get reported on who did just that.
with a group of people that has a bias towards a certain delusion, and/or high acceptance of directly scientifically contradictory beliefs, you can get a bubble and affirm themselves out of reality in the same way. i also wouldn’t suggest banning groups of people, but i believe with groups or with LLMs, a good grounding in scientific thinking is the best way to keep ‘stable’ away from delusion.
a shame that grants are being filtered by a project 2025 author right now, and a bunch of important science got cut by this admin.
also see it like mobile phones, which instead of being useful mobile personal computers, we got data collection bricks that has a skeleton of a few practical tools built into the soft edges of a giant gambling and addiction pipeline.
there’s a whole rant about the high-level psychological manipulation employed against average people just to make them more comfortable losing their money, which does not mean that portable personal computers are bad, but the failure of anti-trust and consumer protection has allowed all technological and social development to be hindered purely for the extractive demands of the people who actually get to decide what happens.
as long as you keep the general public too tired to think about it, you just have to convince them that some other small group is their tribal enemy and that’s where your collective focus and energy should be going, rather than the more simple answer of rich assholes being opportunistic and stupid/evil.
I’d rather have AI as the CEO of my company, than as my doctor. But this feels a bit like overreach.
So now you’ll have to pay $200 every time you have an important question you need answered? My PCP just tells me to use over the counter products anyways. Also is this NY state or city? Why is there a picture of Mamdani?
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No you will just need to sign into a VPN
Modern capitalism derives it’s scarcity via artificial means such as legislation.
The only thing this does is restrict the means of information to the people of NYC. Have you used traditional web search for health/legal/etc. advice? Even pre-2015 if you didn’t know what you’re doing you would get the most unhinged, predatory, incorrect advice imaginable, but legislating away access wasn’t going to make health information more correct, accurate, or equitable. It would’ve just further entrenched the predatory health/legal/etc. industry as the gatekeepers of that knowledge.
This is no different.
I really think this is a bad idea these should really just be flagged, there’s many situations where asking these questions in necessary and there’s few if any other ways to get an answer
Sorta agree. Maybe force them to have a very obvious sign that says AI is routinely wrong about these topics specifically and are not a source to consider reliable, and then also offer a helpline where one can get reasonable answers even if the answer is “unfortunately you need to seek expert opinion on this”
But googling basic labor laws and simple healthcare tricks should be acceptable like stretches for wrist or knee pain, skin/hair care or what level of diarrhea is hospital worthy should be fine.
Same, especially for medical advices.
I am currently going through a very complex diagnosis of combination of SCDS and migraines, and neck joint / facial nerve issues through multiple doctors - ENT, neurologists and so on.
Having AI backing me up with providing a structural understanding from multiple disconnected sources is a huge blessing.
Especially when you die from migraine, and trying to understand are symptoms worth to go to emergency ward or not.
AI can’t back you up better than you can with your own research. Why are you even considering AI credible? What gives it credibility?
It’s not credible, but you can ask it for a credible source and read that, which is still incredibly helpful.
I guess the question is, why ask it for the source? What gives it credibility to be the best at doing such a thing?
It’s not, but a source can be validated by a human much easier than finding the source in the first place.
Use it like a fancy search engine.
The problem with medical questions like these is LLM would spew out info confidently that doctors/specialist don’t even know the answer to. LLM doesn’t know when it’s guessing.
Ask it for a source and verify it, you can even give the source to a doctor if you can’t
It’s not worth trusting AI with your life over a doctor. If in doubt, go to the emergency ward (assuming you’re not American, if you’re American then you’re fucked either way).
If you’re an american the AI is worth using, as you can ask it for a credible source and verifying that is much faster.
This is super dumb. People will just Google their questions instead, and get worse results.
First look at that picture, I thought he was starting to grow a wild mullet
Finally.
I’m careful about laws, i ask for a summary then ask to cite the source for the relevant bits. I’m not asking for legal advice, I want to know what the letter of the law says. Google has always struggled with this.
FUCK ALL AI FOREVER AMEN
Grok is this real?
🤣
yeah enabling the devil to rape in a acceptable manner… I get you need to celebrate small victories, he is just a mayor of the financial capital of the usa but this is just marketing. Hope is useful… I guess but not when it is the devils giving you a hug. I have been where you are sooo I will let you bust your knee… it is the only way you will learn. For I am the lone yank
