[HN Gopher] What if AI is both good and not that disruptive?
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What if AI is both good and not that disruptive?
Author : nr378
Score : 35 points
Date : 2026-01-21 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (deadneurons.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (deadneurons.substack.com)
| pedalpete wrote:
| I work in health (neurotech/sleeptech) and am in the process of
| writing a post which hits on the health aspect.
|
| The things that most people ignore when thinking about AI and
| health is that 2/3rds of Americans are suffer from chronic
| illness and there is a shortage of doctors. Could AI really do
| much worse than the status quo? Doctors won't be replaced, but if
| we could move them up the stack of health to actually doing the
| work of saving lives rather than just looking at rising
| cholesterol numbers and writing scripts?
| JohnFen wrote:
| There's a trust problem for that use case, though.
|
| I don't have a primary care physician because in the area I
| live in, there are no doctors that I can find that are taking
| new patients.
|
| Regardless, I wouldn't want any of my medical data exposed to
| an AI system even if that was the only way to get health care.
| I simply don't trust them enough for that (and HIPAA isn't
| strong enough to make me more comfortable).
| nephihaha wrote:
| The human element has already been lost in medicine in many
| cases, unless you are willing to pay a lot for it. Many
| people need that when they are sick. They want genuine
| support and something resembling sympathy.
|
| My friend died last weekend from cancer. Human
| support/contact was very important to her. AI can't do that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| True. But a whole lot of that loss of the human element
| isn't about AI one way or another. It's about doctors being
| ridiculously overworked.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I don't know if this is a common experience, but the
| first time I really needed a doctor, they spent the whole
| time typing on a laptop. Since that didn't result in any
| follow up questions or anything beyond a referral to a
| specialist, I suspect it was all about getting paid by
| the insurance company. There's a blindingly obvious fix
| to that part of overworked doctors.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some of it is justifying for insurance. But some of it is
| so there's a record to refer to later when you come back.
|
| (Doctors will, for example, still tend to type plenty
| during an appointment in, say, the English NHS.)
| onemoresoop wrote:
| OK, AI could be used transparently to fill out forms and
| write down what the doctor talks to into a microphone,
| assist in the health staff with some tasks in the form of
| interchangeable tools. What we don't need is another
| layer of blackbox magic making everything even more
| murky.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I know a couple of doctors and they both told me the same
| thing (this is likely dependent on exactly where you
| are): the amount of time they can spend with any given
| patient is less than 15 minutes. In practice, they have
| to "rob peter to pay paul" and try to minimize the amount
| of time they spend with patients who have lesser medical
| needs so they can spend more time with patients who have
| more complicated situations.
| nhinck2 wrote:
| Yes because the act of "moving them up the stack" could have
| the opportunity cost of preventing real change that would
| actually improve health outcomes.
|
| AI could allow the whole system to kick the can down the road.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It's almost never a good idea to go for a technology fix when
| there are other obvious defects that could be addressed.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Could AI really do much worse than the status quo?
|
| Yes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| It's encouraged me towards getting diagnosed for my probable
| ADHD. Now I'm mentioning this to people I know and they're
| all giving me:
|
| > you're undiagnosed? I thought it was obvious.
|
| guess I was the last to clock it.
|
| It was people that made me think of it first: a hookup that
| was adament I had it and then a therapist that mentioned in
| our first session. I started the diagnosis like over a year
| ago and completely forgot about it. Its only been asking
| gipity about some symptoms I have and seeing it throw up ADHD
| a lot as a possibility, that encouraged me to go back to
| sorting out the diagnosis.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Prodding you to seek help from a doctor is different than
| what the OP was saying
|
| > Doctors won't be replaced, but if we could move them up
| the stack of health to actually doing the work of saving
| lives rather than just looking at rising cholesterol
| numbers and writing scripts
|
| I presume your AI assistant did not prescribe medication to
| you.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| sure but this is part of preventative care. I'm one of
| those people who are happier to shrug off symptoms than
| go through the effort of seeking medical diagnosis and I
| doubt I'm alone in this.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I don't doubt it _can_ be helpful.
|
| We don't have enough info to determine whether such
| anecdotes translate to widespread benefit or surprising
| consequences.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I'm just suggesting it has a positive impact in
| preventative care by giving people an outlet to discuss
| their symptoms and consider possibilities. Obviously the
| trade off might be more hypochrondriacs but its good for
| people who are the opposite.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes. The question now becomes one of cost/benefit
| analysis between the two. Which is tough, and may take
| decades.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots
|
| We should fix the shortage of healthcare practitioners, not
| hand folks a fancy search engine and say "problem solved."
| Would you put forth "Google your symptoms" as a solution to
| this same problem? The token output is fancy, the confidence in
| accuracy is similar.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This is the default belief we should hold based on historical
| technological changes. Any argument to either extreme requires a
| lot of evidence.
| pizlonator wrote:
| > Assembly programmers became C programmers became Python
| programmers.
|
| Except that there are still a lot of assembly programmers.
|
| And even more C/C++ programmers.
|
| It's also likely that C/C++ programmers didn't become Python
| programmers but that people who wouldn't have otherwise been
| programmers became Python programmers.
|
| > At the well-specified end, you have tasks where the inputs are
| clean, the desired output is clear, and success criteria are
| obvious: processing a standard form, writing code to a precise
| spec, translating a document, summarising a report. LLMs are
| excellent at this
|
| Yeah
|
| > At the ambiguous end, you have tasks where the context is
| messy, the right approach isn't obvious, and success depends on
| knowledge that isn't written down anywhere
|
| Sounds like most programming
|
| Almost all of the programming I've ever done.
|
| > I'm arguing that the most likely outcome is something like
| "computers" or "the internet" rather than "the end of employment
| as we know it."
|
| Yeah
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > Assembly programmers became C programmers became Python
| programmers. The abstraction rose, individual productivity
| increased, more total software got written, and roughly similar
| numbers of people were employed writing it.
|
| The number of programmers has changed so much, from ~zero in the
| 1940s to tens of thousands in the sixties, to, what, maybe 30
| million today? While most programmers worked a little or a lot in
| ASM from invention until the 1980s, it's a very specialized role
| today.
|
| I do not believe that 'roughly similar numbers of people were
| employed writing' ASM, C, and Python except for the instant that
| C outpaced ASM in the seventies and when Python outpaced ASM
| somewhere around the millennium.
|
| Probably at no time were ASM, C, and Python programmers even
| close to similarly numerous.
| Terr_ wrote:
| [delayed]
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > The measured take, that LLMs are a significant productivity
| tool comparable to previous technological shifts but not a
| rupture in the basic economic fabric, doesn't generate much
| engagement. It's boring.
|
| This isn't a new take. The problem is, "boring" doesn't warrant
| the massive bet the market has made on it, so this argument is
| essentially "AI is worthless" to someone significantly invested.
|
| It's not so much that people aren't making this argument, it's
| that it's being tossed immediately into the "stochastic parrot"
| bunch.
| holistio wrote:
| > software got written, and roughly similar numbers of people
| were employed writing it
|
| That's just simply not true.
| ufo wrote:
| In my work as a professor, AI has demonstrated a noticeable
| disruptive impact for the worse.
|
| It has become difficult to grade students using anything other
| than in-person pen and paper assessments, because AI cheating is
| rampant and hard to detect. It is particularly bad for
| introductory-level courses; the simpler the material the hardest
| it is to make it AI-proof.
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