this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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28
Kent hospital first to use AI to identify infections in patients (www.bbc.co.uk)
submitted 1 month ago by LadyButterfly@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net 19 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I used to think that the benefit of using AI in medicine, specifically radiology, was plausible.. There is SO much data in a CT scan or MRI that human eyes just can't see, you lose soo much granularity converting a 3D scan to a 2D image on a screen so some bloodshot doctor can look at it...

AI should, in theory, be able to read a scan and find pinprick tumors or irregularities and at least tell the doctors where to look...

But now, watching LLM's do their thing, I'm now convinced that there isn't an AI around that is worth it's weight in horse-shit.

[–] candyman337@piefed.ca 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Analytical AI is much more useful than generative AI and even if it were LLMs doing the work, with a doctor checking it can be very beneficial

[–] zlatko@programming.dev -5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

And if they do misdiagnose one in five patients, well, they shouldn't have gotten infected, it's their fault.

[–] candyman337@piefed.ca 7 points 1 month ago

That's why you do everything with human review, I said that in my comment, come on now

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

AI can be a force multiplier for doctors. The catch is it needs to be doctor led. It's quite trivial for a doctor to dismiss the obvious hallucinations. If it also points them towards more subtle signs they would potentially miss, then that's a net win.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Doctors definitely need no help screwing up that much

[–] Gregers@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

Luckily it isn't LLMs doing those tasks

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

LLMs are not the same as neural network machine based image sorting. It's been proven more accurate than pathologists.

[–] ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would still want a human being to verify the diagnosis before anything gets cut. ;-)

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago

Pathology error rates are too high, everyone should be getting a second opinion and all pathology reports should be cross-checked.

[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Where AI could be useful, it needs significant investment, if paired with resources it can look for patterns in scans.

However the process an AI uses to make a decision is similar to encoding of an image, so I wonder how it compares in terms of resolution to high resolution pictures produced by MRIs

[–] ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net 5 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I think it should never be involved in decision-making... Pointing out a place for doctors to explore maybe...actually diagnosing? no.

[–] cx40@piefed.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think preventative medicine is where it would shine the most. There's so much data that we can capture with little additional cost. It just wouldn't be data that a human can reasonably make use of.

The problem is mainly who we can trust with this data.

[–] ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net 1 points 1 month ago

Oh absolutely. Like the "cologard" test... an early screening to identify a problem before it becomes a problem.

[–] gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Which kind of AI? I certainly hope not LLMs.

[–] einkorn@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Probably the same type of image recognition that volunteers have been training for years on data sets ranging from exoplanets to tumor cells.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The kind that has the side effect of making those doctors worse at their jobs

[–] filcuk@feddit.uk 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's like people being worse at riding horses today. We don't need the skill because we have tools that replaced it and generally do a better job.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's a good thing that we don't need any doctors to train the AI or verify its results afterwards, because otherwise you'd be dangerously wrong with this comparison.

[–] filcuk@feddit.uk 0 points 1 month ago

That's fair. I'm probably not thinking it through. I can certainly see how this could quickly go downhill. I think we'll see the reality of it with today's school generations getting jobs in a few decades.

[–] Zarxrax@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It says it in the article, it just takes some data from the patients chart and calculates a score for the person's risk of getting an infection.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago

Which is all an MD does. Glorified auto mechanics.

[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Why is she looking smug