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Comment by no_butterscotch | Hacker News Reader

I was using ChatGPT this week for help with a back injury I suddenly sustained. Because I don't have insurance I was looking for options as to what I should do and what it'd cost and where to go etc.

I did get a suggestion that I followed up on for an in person visit.

But my big beef with it was that it kept adding disclaimers: "I am not a doctor", "My current knowledge is up to September 2021, insurance and hospital info may be out of date", "<blah> <blah> but remember, I am not a doctor and it is important to consult a medical professional".

I understand the disclaimers from a legal standpoint but boy is it tiresome when I'm asking back and forth questions and each answer contains some element of it.

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I dont think you should use ChatGPT for anything serious, especially something health related. It's simply not designed for that purpose. Best case scenario is you are getting the combined wisdom of reddit, and worst case you are getting convincing sounding made-up nonsense.

I suspect that if OpenAI didn't have ChatGPT continuously output these disclaimers then they could get in a lot of legal trouble if, say, someone asked it for medical or legal advice and then sued when something bad happened.

I sincerely hope OP is doing this for entertainment purposes only or as a very basic aid to shopping around, and not actually accepting medical advice from ChatGPT (or the Internet in general). The fact that I might be wrong about that suggests those disclaimers are absolutely necessary!

I can't think of a topic that would need this disclaimer more than medical advice provided by a language model.

Out of curiosity, were you able to find a free clinic or someplace where a real healthcare provider could assess the injury?

I found a lot of luck by telling ChatGPT that I want direct answers only.

But you're right, it's annoying.

Apparently the message aren’t frequent enough, as you clearly did not heed their message.

The problem is that if they didn't give constant disclaimers then a lot of people would very happily sue them out of existence if possible and at the very least constantly condemn them at every opportunity.

This kind of AI capability challenges worldviews. And that means that many people are very eager to tear it down and find ways to dismiss it. Combine that with the general enthusiasm for excessive litigation, the fact that it actually will occasionally give advice that could be very misleading, general lack of cognitive ability of those consuming it, and it explains why there are so many disclaimers.

They could literally draw a direct line from all the tokens in those disclaimers/boiler plate to dollars in the forfeited energy use.

You underestimate how absolutely stupid many people are.

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