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Comment by mips_avatar | Hacker News Reader

IDK I got really sick in a foreign country, I wasn't sure how to get to the hospital and I was alone in a hotel room. I don't really know how using chatgpt to help me isn't actualizing.

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We used to have Google search and Google maps which solved this problem of finding information about symptoms and finding medical centers near you. LLM doesn’t make anything better it just confidently asserts things about medicine that may be wrong and always need to be verified with the real sources anyway.

Well google search is a little nerfed since it went full ad revenue focused

If you are operating under the constraint that talking to strangers is impossible then I could see why ChatGPT feels like a godsend...

did you try asking at the reception desk?

The hotel owner eventually half carried me to the hospital because I got so weak from dehydration, though I'm glad I left my hotel room when I did I had difficulty avoiding fainting.

Sounds like it was the hotel owner not chatgpt who saved your ass in the end.

Rafael was the absolute best. He also made sure the hospital saw me right away since I was so weak. But once I was hooked up I used ChatGPT to scan the ivs they had me hooked up to since I had no idea what they were pumping into me since it was all in Spanish.

You said you solved problems with ChatGPT's help. You described a problem Rafael and hospital staff solved for you. And the problem you solved with ChatGPT could have been solved with a dictionary.

I guess this was very American of me, but when I was so sick I wanted to know if my travel insurance would cover the hospital stay. ChatGPT confirmed that it did, and told me to get to a hospital. Ultimately the hotel owner was the person who carried me to the hospital, but i wasn't lucid enough to read through my travel insurance's benefits pdf. I suppose I should have just gone to the hospital with or without insurance, but sometimes when you're very sick you don't think straight.

You said you used ChatGPT to help you get to the hospital. Then you said you used it to translate pharmaceutical names. Then you said you asked it about your travel insurance. These could be true together. But it says more of you than LLMs if you could not imagine how to solve any of these problems without LLMs.

Your travel insurance did not have emergency phone service?

LLMs are not reliable for medical advice or document questions.

Growing up in the internet age (I'm 28 now) it took me until well into my 20s to realize how many classes of problems can be solved in 30 seconds on a phone call vs hours on a computer.

I can't imagine being in this situation and thinking "I will ask ChatGPT" instead of "I will ask the people at the front desk of this hotel I'm staying at"

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