Babylon Health labels clinician a 'Twitter troll' over AI chatbot inaccuracy | Hacker News Reader

Babylon Health labels clinician a 'Twitter troll' over AI chatbot inaccuracy

techcrunch.com

20 pointscolesantiago5 comments

This is pretty worrying, both that there appear to be significant medical issues with the chatbot advice, and that their product analytics aren't mature enough to be able to tell them that.

They claim the doctor who raised concerns ran ~2400 tests, with 20 legitimate errors. An error rate of "0.8%".

The doctor who raised the issues claims this is more like 800 tests run to completion (where you can even get results), and that many of these were repeated tests, so far fewer separate tests. This would suggest an error rate of more like 2.5-10%, depending on how many repetitions he was making.

Separate to this, Babylon published this data about his usage of the app in a press release without his permission. They say this is ok because it's not personal data, but while it likely doesn't count as health data I would say that it is personal data. That said I'm sure one could diagnose Munchausen Syndrome with it, so potentially it is health data. It is _very_ worrying that they have such a cavalier attitude to data protection.

As for the personal data aspect, why does that come as a surpise to you? Babylon Health's website is full of Google tracking, which to me raises a huge concern. Now I get you do it in regards to your home page, but when it comes to user account pages, that's really dubious to me.

What they should have done was said, thank you for raising these concerns, come work with us or advise on how we can improve our service.

Babylon's actions do not surprise me in the slightest. As a former employee I have grave concerns about the way this company operates.

Senior management seems bi-polar at best. The cult like leader preaches great culture and vision on a path to change to world, yet on the other hand being ruthless to the point of people burning out and getting fired (more like "disappeared") for standing up against unreasonable requests and risky management decisions.

Their technology teams and platforms are a shambles. Lots of staff members question the accuracy and validity of the "AI" behind the chat bot. When a simple linear regression used to "predict" your step count is presented as if it is a breakthrough in AI then one starts to worry.

Almost all teams suffer from burnout, low morale and everything is constantly a top priority for management. The average tenure of a permanent employee is 9 months. Not a very good sign for a healthcare company.

I would not be surprised if this turns into a Theranos style scandal. (Just dont ever mention the words Theranos to the founder or higher ups as that will be the end of your time at Babylon)

Babylon Health is lucky to have him do their testing for free. normally you have to pay SMEs a lot to test your application

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