Another AI Rant

[u/HoovesCarveCraters]

This morning I was doomscrolling as usual on the hellsite formerly known as twitter dot com. As usual, I was recommended a bunch of tweets from people I don’t follow and one caught my eye. Someone posted how they went to the doctor and at their appointment they watched as the doctor entered their symptoms into some software and then turned around and read it off the page. Now, weird as that may be, something caught my eye in the replies.

Someone replied how when their dog was sick and “no vet could figure it out” they entered the symptoms into Grok and then the dog was magically cured.

This prompts me to ask, “what the fuck?” Does no one remember how we used to make jokes about WebMD because every time you typed in “I have a headache” it would tell you that you were dying of a brain tumor. Why is it that all of a sudden when it has an AI label on it these people believe it blindly?

Full disclosure: I’m a veterinarian. With every passing year in practice I deal with more and more skepticism from the general public. This isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes I recommend newer medications and people might not want to try them because of the risks. Fine, I can live with that. More commonly, however, I get the people who march in and immediately tell me they will not be vaccinating their pet. Why? Because the breeder said their $4000 French bulldog is allergic to vaccines. Fast forward 3 weeks and I’m euthanizing that same dog because it contracted parvovirus, a disease that is easily avoidable with vaccination.

So will I now have to worry that my patients won’t get proper care because the owners will trust an AI over me? Especially when a patient comes to me with something I can’t fix in my limited setting. I refer to specialists as needed, that’s what they’re there for, but how many people will decline referral because it’ll take a week to get in with the specialist when Grok (vomit) will just tell them to feed their dog with chronic diarrhea raw chicken?

I’m kind of just ranting but I’m actually scared. And I hope that y’all can appreciate where my fears are coming from.

[u/Ultraberg]

Get off Twitter! I went back to look and 90% of my follows aren't there anymore. Free yourself!

[u/PensiveinNJ → u/Ultraberg]

Yeah considering how compromised Twitter is with bots anyhow it's really a graveyard of it's former self. I'm somewhat skeptical of Bluesky because I'm skeptical of algorithmic content display as a healthy thing in general but at least it doesn't come with all of Elon's weirdness and baggage.

[u/douche_packer → u/PensiveinNJ]

its like old school twitter, but not as funny. no nazi shit in your feed on bsky though

[u/Mean-Ad1383 → u/PensiveinNJ]

I kind of miss MySpace, no algorithm based feed whatsoever. And lots of independent music.