Post #3839704

2026-07-15 16:05 UTC

Feeling validated keeps you alive. Keeps you going. Might nudge you to raise it in a doctor's appointment because you were told yeah this is real and it matters. This is my issue with takes on AI entirely out of context. Context (for both humans and models) changes the information.

Replies (2)

@sashag@anarres.family 2026-07-15 19:13

@grimalkina@mastodon.social I have what is called a rare disease (prevalence 1-9/100.000). I was effing lucky to have a very good internist. And he looked at the blood work and thought something is at odds here. And he immediately talked to the rheumatologist at the clinic who happens to be the European specialist for this type of disease (apart from being a horrible jerk of a person). He looked at my knuckles and hands and had a diagnosis. This is SO rare and I know how much luck I had. I'm pretty sure I would have used AI systems as one tool if I would not have had this opportunity.

Open ##3839703
@brib@bribstodon.xyz 2026-07-15 18:39

@grimalkina@mastodon.social I don't have a huge amount of experience in this area and most of my chronic illness diagnosis journey was done via Dr Google / social media (which also got highly derided at the time). I'm pretty anti-LLM but I'm also aware there can be complexities and I don't want to go about yelling at people when they're e.g. in the position of the 50 year old cancer patient and just want answers. In your experience, when it comes to harm (e.g. going down a wrong information rabbit hole) vs benefit (e.g. the benefits to motivation), how do you think AI use compares and fits in with these older methods of using the Internet to figure out chronic illness? Are they similar, or do some methods have better benefit-against-harm profiles? Has LLM use affected the ability to access non-LLM methods? (I'm thinking how it used to be easy to access human-written information but now it's much harder).

Open ##3864719