The Lemon Fool

murraypaul wrote:

odysseus2000 wrote:With an AI the patient can get through in seconds, speak to the same AI which has all the patients details and before long will know more about them than their mother. The AI can do both the job of the GP and the psychologist which a human GP may refer the patient to.

In essence AI creates a knowledgeable Samartian, programmed with all known human psychology and able to interact with the patient for as long as the patient wants, simultaneously dealing with 1000's of other patients at the same time and while maintaining a memory of all the patient has told the AI in previous sessions and a knowledge of the patients physiological state as well.

That is wonderful, but it doesn't exist yet, and nothing we have is even close.
You are describing science fiction, not science fact.

I suggest you do some research, go and talk with folk working in these areas and see how far out what I am describing is. It is far far closer than most people recognise.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:

AI does have its place for some ailments, but some issues, especially mental health issues where logic flies out the window, absolutely need human interaction.
And mental health issues represent an ever-growing proportion of GP's time

doolally

Actually I think AI will be far better for mental health issues.

As we stand now a patient has to wait a long time for a telephone appointment, often sees or audios with a different person every time and then gets prescribed drugs with addictive properties that treat the symptoms not the underlying problems.

With an AI the patient can get through in seconds, speak to the same AI which has all the patients details and before long will know more about them than their mother. The AI can do both the job of the GP and the psychologist which a human GP may refer the patient to.

In essence AI creates a knowledgeable Samartian, programmed with all known human psychology and able to interact with the patient for as long as the patient wants, simultaneously dealing with 1000's of other patients at the same time and while maintaining a memory of all the patient has told the AI in previous sessions and a knowledge of the patients physiological state as well.

This kind of service is now available to very wealthy and powerful folk who can afford private physicians etc, but most have to make to do with terrible service.

Regards,

With respect that is a long way from how mental health provision happens.

If only I could find some suitably wise words on how to proceed. How about?

odysseus2000 wrote:I suggest you do some research, go and talk with folk working in these areas .

dealtn
With respect that is a long way from how mental health provision happens.

If only I could find some suitably wise words on how to proceed. How about?
odysseus2000 wrote:
I suggest you do some research, go and talk with folk working in these areas .

I have known several people who have been treated as I describe, others who failed to even get an appointment to talk with their GP over the phone.

There is an entire private health industry devoted to people with these kinds of illness, but many do not have the means to pay for it.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:

dealtn
With respect that is a long way from how mental health provision happens.

If only I could find some suitably wise words on how to proceed. How about?
odysseus2000 wrote:
I suggest you do some research, go and talk with folk working in these areas .

I have known several people who have been treated as I describe, others who failed to even get an appointment to talk with their GP over the phone.

There is an entire private health industry devoted to people with these kinds of illness, but many do not have the means to pay for it.

Regards,

And there is an entire public health industry within the NHS that gives provision to those with mental health problems that would be horrified at your description of their industry. My wife, through her work, interacts with some of them almost daily. I can't imagine many of them would endorse AI, as it currently stands, as an appropriate, or practical approach for most mental health issues.

In your own words, again.

odysseus2000 wrote:I suggest you do some research, go and talk with folk working in these areas.

odysseus2000 wrote:

AI does have its place for some ailments, but some issues, especially mental health issues where logic flies out the window, absolutely need human interaction.
And mental health issues represent an ever-growing proportion of GP's time

doolally

Actually I think AI will be far better for mental health issues.

As we stand now a patient has to wait a long time for a telephone appointment, often sees or audios with a different person every time and then gets prescribed drugs with addictive properties that treat the symptoms not the underlying problems.

With an AI the patient can get through in seconds, speak to the same AI which has all the patients details and before long will know more about them than their mother. The AI can do both the job of the GP and the psychologist which a human GP may refer the patient to.

In essence AI creates a knowledgeable Samartian, programmed with all known human psychology and able to interact with the patient for as long as the patient wants, simultaneously dealing with 1000's of other patients at the same time and while maintaining a memory of all the patient has told the AI in previous sessions and a knowledge of the patients physiological state as well.

This kind of service is now available to very wealthy and powerful folk who can afford private physicians etc, but most have to make to do with terrible service.

Regards,

Ody, it appears that your personal(?) experience of mental health treatment is very different to my personal experience and needs

doolally

Ody, it appears that your personal(?) experience of mental health treatment is very different to my personal experience and needs

doolally

By the grace of God I have not, so far at least, needed mental health treatment, but I have known others who did.

The primary criteria for good treatment seem to be a GP who refers you to a NHS system that then does a good job or enough money to go private.

The folk who have done the worst imh experience are those who sought help from their GP and didn't get.

Clearly I am using a very broad paint brush here for what is a very complicated trouble with very many treatment options, but my experience of the GP service at least at my local surgery has been worse than that which my dog gets at the vets.

Given a choice I would prefer an intelligent AI to one of the medics who I rarely see directly and whose telephone skills are challenged. I suspect that a lot of the trouble comes from the working practices forced on GP rather than the individual GP and of course one could have a poor AI system, but very many people I speak to are scathing about their GP and what they believe to be rubbish service. As of now there is no hope of this service improving as it is impossible to train or recruit from elsewhere all the medics needed and to me, at least, AI looks to be the only good way forwards.

Regards,

I quite agree with odysseus2000, and it's an argument I've been advocating for years.

The whole GP system is very outdated. For a start, the vast majority of patients don't need to be seen by a GP, as they have routine ailments that don't justify the attention of such a highly qualified (and highly paid) professional. I've therefore been pleased to see the rise of nurse practitioners, and we need far more of them.

The majority of patients could be perfectly well looked after by NP's. They're far quicker to train and much cheaper to employ, so employing many more of them could solve the GP shortage pretty quickly.

It's also the case that many older GP's are just serving out their time, having become disillusioned with modern practice. I suspect they aren't really interested in keeping up to date and they’re no doubt fed up with having to sign sick notes for people who just want a holiday or some compo, or being expected to treat people who are ill through their own behaviour.

In short, it's a waste of resources to train GP's to a very high standard and then expect them to deal with mundane cases for decades on end.

I'm also aware from my professional life just how many mistakes GP's make. It's an old joke that doctors bury their mistakes, but there’s more than a kernel of truth in it. Although people moan about ambulance chasing lawyers some of the errors I've come across are horrendous, and have left people seriously ill for the rest of their life. And for every patient that sues there are many more who could but don't.

But like much of the NHS GP's have assumed a semi-sacred status, and any proposals for reform are treated as heterodoxy. This is partly because they have, in the BMA, one of the few very powerful unions that remain, but also because people want to believe they are demi-gods, capable of performing medical miracles, so that they become beyond criticism.

But although in every other respect our lives have been transformed by technology the visit to the GP has remained in the 1950's. It's as though we were legally obliged to do our shopping at the corner shop rather than visit a supermarket, let alone shop online.

Fortunately I very rarely see my GP, but when I did go to see him a couple of years ago I was less than impressed. He's a very nice chap, and we enjoyed a chat, but when it came down to dealing with the problem he was basically clueless. I'd already self-diagnosed, courtesy of Dr Google MD, and tentatively suggested what it might be. He then started tapping on his keyboard, but I could see in the reflection of the screen on the door behind him that he was Googling it himself! He then confirmed what I'd suspected.

I don't in anyway blame him - after all, it was a fairly obscure condition, and we can't expect GP's to know all there is to know about medicine - but driving home I was thinking that a good AI system would probably have diagnosed me almost immediately.

Another factor in favour of AI is that it removes the judgmental element. I know from having spoken to GP's that their attitude to the patient varies according to the patient's perceived status. If they're well-educated and health conscious they will probably be treated with more care than someone who's perceived as a lazy, drunken layabout. This is entirely natural - we all do it - but it does sometimes mean that people who may have the most need of medical care are actually the least likely to receive it.

I've also heard that for much the same reasons people who are being `treated' by AI actually give a much more honest history, as they aren't frightened of being judged by a middle-class professional, and the more honest the history the more accurate the diagnosis. AI would treat every patient the same, so that this element of prejudice would be eliminated.

So bring it on - the sooner the better. It would enable far more people to be treated more effectively and at a far lower cost. I think many people - including myself - would actively welcome it, and I've not the slightest doubt that the clinical outcomes would improve dramatically.

I can see that it may be harder to apply to mental health issues, but here again it's not as if GP's have a wonderful track record. They are all too ready to dish out tranquilisers and anti-depressants, in which, via their highly profitable dispensaries, they have an uncomfortable degree of financial interest.

Another factor in favour of AI is that it removes the judgmental element.

One of the problems with AI can be that it hard codes bias in, which isn't to say that there isn't an awful lot of improvement to be made by using AI, and other technology.

One of the things it is particularly good at is image recognition, where it appears to have a very bright future. Speaking of images and technology and unnecessary GP visits a friend recently got a referral from their GP to see a specialist about a potentially problematic lesion by popping a couple of photos in to an app and uploading them. The photo would have been looked at by human eye, but this sort of thing should have been introduced far back and should by now be becoming the norm.

BobbyD wrote:

Another factor in favour of AI is that it removes the judgmental element.

One of the problems with AI can be that it hard codes bias in, which isn't to say that there isn't an awful lot of improvement to be made by using AI, and other technology.

Only recently:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58462511

Facebook users who watched a newspaper video featuring black men were asked if they wanted to "keep seeing videos about primates" by an artificial-intelligence recommendation system.
...
In 2015, Google's Photos app labelled pictures of black people as "gorillas".

An AI is only as useful as the training it has been given.

UPST is a US company using AI to better match sellers of financial products to buyers of financial products, mostly loans.

In this short video the CEO explains to Cramer something of what UPST are doing and why they are making a lot of money:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/08/26/u ... akers.html

Regards,

This is an interesting youtube on neuromorphic chips, probably the greatest scientific and technical develop ever:

https://youtu.be/BDrrjLB7lgE

Regards,

It's scaring some people, but artificial intelligence can bring with it great opportunities for profit. There are many jobs that will become obsolete because of AI, sure, but there is also no reason an automated machine should take up 60-80% of the wages for coding web pages or putting together excel sheets. Imagine a world where databases coding webpages and excel sheets could be programmed cheaply enough to compete with its human counterpart. You would then see prices go down on goods and services that need these things done (hiring) coupled with inflation in underutilized physical labor like construction workers building new buildings (they're still needed!) This leads to more money circulating around the economy which has positive effects like increased consumption

Albert90 wrote:It's scaring some people, but artificial intelligence can bring with it great opportunities for profit. There are many jobs that will become obsolete because of AI, sure, but there is also no reason an automated machine should take up 60-80% of the wages for coding web pages or putting together excel sheets. Imagine a world where databases coding webpages and excel sheets could be programmed cheaply enough to compete with its human counterpart. You would then see prices go down on goods and services that need these things done (hiring) coupled with inflation in underutilized physical labor like construction workers building new buildings (they're still needed!) This leads to more money circulating around the economy which has positive effects like increased consumption

Great - mankind will already be prepared for its future once true AI appears (as beasts of burden for the machine AIs doing their physical labour - hope they treat us better than we treat horses and donkeys).

ursaminortaur wrote:

Albert90 wrote:It's scaring some people, but artificial intelligence can bring with it great opportunities for profit. There are many jobs that will become obsolete because of AI, sure, but there is also no reason an automated machine should take up 60-80% of the wages for coding web pages or putting together excel sheets. Imagine a world where databases coding webpages and excel sheets could be programmed cheaply enough to compete with its human counterpart. You would then see prices go down on goods and services that need these things done (hiring) coupled with inflation in underutilized physical labor like construction workers building new buildings (they're still needed!) This leads to more money circulating around the economy which has positive effects like increased consumption

Great - mankind will already be prepared for its future once true AI appears (as beasts of burden for the machine AIs doing their physical labour - hope they treat us better than we treat horses and donkeys).

Why would AI need meat machines to do jobs when it could create its own steel machines with increased strength, more agility, much improved accuracy etc.

If anything approaching General AI emerges there will be no need of meat machines, but perhaps the AI will treat its parents well.

Regards,

Science fiction has been worried about robots for centuries - but in reality new technology will create new human jobs, such as polishing the robots, oiling the robots and cleaning bits of protestor from the robots' teeth.


http://www.stephencollinsillustration.c ... mber_2.jpg

odysseus2000 wrote:

ursaminortaur wrote:

Albert90 wrote:It's scaring some people, but artificial intelligence can bring with it great opportunities for profit. There are many jobs that will become obsolete because of AI, sure, but there is also no reason an automated machine should take up 60-80% of the wages for coding web pages or putting together excel sheets. Imagine a world where databases coding webpages and excel sheets could be programmed cheaply enough to compete with its human counterpart. You would then see prices go down on goods and services that need these things done (hiring) coupled with inflation in underutilized physical labor like construction workers building new buildings (they're still needed!) This leads to more money circulating around the economy which has positive effects like increased consumption

Great - mankind will already be prepared for its future once true AI appears (as beasts of burden for the machine AIs doing their physical labour - hope they treat us better than we treat horses and donkeys).

Why would AI need meat machines to do jobs when it could create its own steel machines with increased strength, more agility, much improved accuracy etc.

If anything approaching General AI emerges there will be no need of meat machines, but perhaps the AI will treat its parents well.

Regards,

I think nowadays our minds are so influenced by movies like Terminator etc. in which AI has been shown as our enemy. We need to understand that having advanced AI technology would truly enhance our productivity and efficiency which will consequently results in cheaper services and goods. Our main threat is that it will significantly increase unemployment rate.

Albert90
I think nowadays our minds are so influenced by movies like Terminator etc. in which AI has been shown as our enemy. We need to understand that having advanced AI technology would truly enhance our productivity and efficiency which will consequently results in cheaper services and goods. Our main threat is that it will significantly increase unemployment rate.

We have no idea where AI is going.

In the short term we are likely to see many jobs being replaced by AI and many of these jobs will be ones that currently require a lot of study and are well remunerated but which can no longer satisfactorily serve us. This will lead to massive social dislocation, luddite behaviour before a general acceptance that AI is our future. Examples of jobs likely to become AI dominated include Medicine, Legal professionals, Scientists, Engineers... anything that does not require human dexterity to accomplish. Later we can expect AI and robotics to do most of the manual work too, from highly skilled stuff like surgeons through to unskilled work like labouring on a building site and every job in between.

In a happy longer term future, General AI will leave us free to focus on human interactions and do what ever interests us with much reduced financial and resource limits. In this scenario AI will solve all the issues that trouble us and we will expand through out the galaxy helped and supported by AI.

In a less happy future, one nation develops military technology based on AI that allow them to dominate the world forcing their agenda on everyone else.

In a more unhappy world, machines become the dominant political and military power and force humans to become a second class species governed by their decisions.

In all previous industrial revolutions old ways have been replaced by new, we rarely see anyone trying to turn the clock back to earlier days and having success. Revolutions make things better and old ways obsolete.

I do not see how this revolution can be stopped or slowed down. If one country was to try this they would rapidly become uneconomic and be crippled by more advanced competitors.

As things are the vast majority of the human population are unaware of what is coming and do not expect much to change and what changes do occur to be slowly beneficial and not radical in their effect. This is how things are before any revolution and then at some moment it becomes obvious by the effects they feel that entirely new ways have been developed while they have been busied with life and they have to adapt.

Regards,

Interestingly fictional documentary showing how slaughter bots could be used as weapons.

Since this was made various companies have begun to offer the fictional capability shown here for real

(After circa 7 mins 21 the video seems to repeat)

https://youtu.be/6Ipkq-BASaM

Regards,

Super interesting video describing the advances in ai & how this technology is changing the world:

https://youtu.be/2uZeVYjofiM

Regards,