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A comment on OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50-55% by triage doctors. Parent comment

Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by largbae on Sunday May 03, 2026 @04:14PM (#48000936)
But liability and ethics cannot be put aside. If treatments were free of cost and perfectly address problems, then a correct diagnosis would always lead to the optimal patient outcome. In that scenario, AI diagnosis will be like code generation and go asymptotic to perfection as models improve.

But a doctor's job in the real world today is to navigate a total mess of uncertainty: about the expected outcome of treatments given a patient's age and other peoblems. About the psychological effect of knowing about a problem that they cannot effectively treat. Even about what the signals in the chart and x-ray mean with any certainty.

We are very far from having unit test suites for medical problems.

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Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by brookst on Sunday May 03, 2026 @04:19PM (#48000999)
Isn't that conflating diagnosis and treatment plan?
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Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by largbae on Sunday May 03, 2026 @04:26PM (#48001073)
Sure, but my anecdotal experience is that doctors do this regularly in real life, especially when choosing to diagnose or ignore problems that are unlikely to kill an aging patient before some other larger issue does.
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Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by brookst on Sunday May 03, 2026 @04:35PM (#48001178)
Gotcha, I was thinking more about radiologists than patient-facing doctors.
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Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by azan_ on Sunday May 03, 2026 @05:08PM (#48001513)
Radiologists do it too.
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Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by snickerbockers on Sunday May 03, 2026 @07:03PM (#48002524)
>AI diagnosis will be like code generation and go asymptotic to perfection as models improve

uhhhhhhh, I'm pretty behind-the-times on this stuff so I could be the one who's wrong here but I don't believe that has happened????

But anyways that nitpicking aside I agree with you wholeheartedly that reducing the doctor's job to diagnosis (and specifically whatever subset of that can be done by a machine-learning model that doesn't even get to physically interact with the patient) is extremely myopic and probably a bit insulting towards actual doctors.

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Re:OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50... by GorbachevyChase on Sunday May 03, 2026 @10:09PM (#48003839)
Liability would put all this to bed. Is OpenAI liable for malpractice if it misdiagnoses your issue? No? Then it’s no substitute. Being right is not nearly as important as being responsible. Unfortunately, there is widespread perception that software defects are acceptable, whereas operating on the wrong leg isn’t.
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