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Comment by kaffekaka | Hacker News Reader

Once again, glad to live in Europe.

If you lived in the US and you didn't like this product, you can just choose to not use it. What benefit do you as a citizen of Europe derive from having this withheld from you?

> you didn't like this product, you can just choose to not use it

This is an over-simplification. I might like the product, but not be aware of the various ways it violates my privacy. Having laws that make it more risky for companies to do nefarious things makes me more confident that if a product is available in the EU market it doesn't do obviously bad things.

"You can just choose not to use it", sure, until signing a consent form to use ChatGPT becomes mandatory for a doctor visit, just like all kinds of other technology (like having a cell phone to verify SMS, for example) is basically essential now to function in society.

Doctors in Europe already use LLMs to treat you.

That sounds like the kind of hallucinated statement you might expect from ChatGPT.

Which doctors, in which countries, are using LLMs to treat patients?

i’m not the person you replied to. but a quick google search is just as much effort (on your part) as replying with a sassy “this sounds like a hallucination”. A low value comment in my opinion.

I found this:

https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/19-11-2025-is-your-doct...

Quote:

> “AI is already a reality for millions of health workers and patients across the European Region,” said Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe. “But without clear strategies, data privacy, legal guardrails and investment in AI literacy, we risk deepening inequities rather than reducing them.”

My experience with ChatGPT is that it rarely dares to make short, generalizing, opinionated statements without an excruciating amount of hedging.

Doctors pay subscriptions for specialized software that relies on LLMs enriched with medical context. But like other professionals, they also use ChatGPT as a search engine and verify what it tells them by virtue of being, well, doctors.

I get some of us here in the US have a near-allergic reaction to regulations or prohibition of any kind, but come on man. At some point you have to acknowledge we need the government to protect us from corporate greed, even on rare occasion. “Just don’t use it” is not a real argument when basically everyone is now expected to use LLM’s at work and beyond

Well, I've really love being protected from cookies. Has done wonders for my experience on the web.

It is not that "this product is withheld from me". It is that we have laws to protect against abusive corporations. ChatGPT Health not being launched in EU is because OpenAI themselves realized it abuses peoples privacy.

Just like you can choose not to have a bank, any credit lines, a smartphone, or a car: only by arranging your entire life around those decisions or keeping close someone who has those things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com