I do have a tech background in addition to being a medical student and it really drives me bonkers that we’re calling these overgrown algorithms “AI”. The generative AI models I suppose are a little closer to earning the definition as they are black-box programs that develop themselves to a certain extent, but all of the reputable “AI” programs used in science and medicine are very carefully curated algorithms with specific rules and parameters that they follow.

The discriminative AI’s are just really complex algorithms, and to my understanding, are not complete black-boxes. As someone who has a lot of medical problems I receive care for as well as being someone who will be a physician in about 10 months, I refuse to trust any black-box programming with my health or anyone else’s.

Right now, the only legitimate use generative AI has in medicine is as a note-taker to ease the burden of documentation on providers. Their work is easily checked and corrected, and if your note-taking robot develops weird biases, you can delete it and start over. I don’t trust non-human things to actually make decisions.

They don’t use the generative models for this. The AI’s that do this kind of work are trained on carefully curated data and have a very narrow scope that they are good at.

The important thing to know here is that those AI were trained by very experienced radiologists who are physicians that specialize in reading imaging. The AI’s wouldn’t have this capability if the humans didn’t train them.

Also, the imaging that AI performs well with is fairly specific, and there are many kinds of imaging techniques and diagnostic applications that the AI is still very bad at.

The doctors that only ever studied medicine and nothing else have a tendency to be impressively stupid in anything that isn’t their direct specialty.

I have to look stuff up for medical school (usually trying to find studies and whatnot) so the gemini results are just obnoxious garbage to me.

Firefox has a plugin that blocks the AI results. It works pretty well most of the time, but it occasionally has hiccups when Google updates stuff or something.

I think the pay issue is *another big contributor. Women are more likely to accept lower paying jobs, particularly ones like caring professions or teaching, whereas men have a tendency towards higher paying jobs (in part due to the lack of support for pregnancy, parental leave, and childcare expenses).

*edited for clarity

The problem with that is you are then putting the burden on a member of that hated group to present themselves as a paragon and suffer all the vitriol and abuse that gets hurled at them until the hateful person hopefully snaps out of it.

Having been the sole woman in many male-dominated spaces, I gotta tell ya, it is a special kind of hell to try to be that positive example.

From the commenter above talking about negative experiences with talking to women and female therapists, I think the real solution is that men need to be proactive about supporting each other. Ranting and raving about how women are terrible and don’t know how to help men with an undercurrent of expectations that women (especially a romantic partner) should fix everything is simply not a tenable mindset.

As a woman who works in the medical field, I am keenly aware of my limitations when it comes to helping men with mental health issues. I think the real, effective solution is for men to start opening up to each other and supporting each other the way that women tend to do among themselves. I don’t mean this as “oh, men are terrible and they need to fuck off somewhere else with their problems”, I mean it as a sincere belief that the best people to help a man through emotional or psychological problems are probably other men given the shared socialization and perspective.

I don’t think the open internet is a great place to open up about your mental health either. Trusted family, friends, and medical/mental health professionals are the best resources. Entrusting something as precious as your mental health to AI or the internet is a profoundly bad idea.

Minnesota: Honeycrisp apple hard cider and fried Ellsworth cheese curds.

But the front/hood is much shorter in length. Also, people driving that type of van are much more likely to be doing so in a professional capacity and are significantly less likely to be asshole drivers fucking around with their phone while driving. People are bad drivers at baseline quite frequently, but if someone is on the job in a van used for commercial purposes, they’re more likely to at least be paying attention and not speeding everywhere.

Edit: I marked up your image to illustrate the point made much more eloquently in the video. Because of the length of the hood, the truck has a much longer distance of road obstructed from view in front of it, and this is with a standard truck that doesn’t have one of the very popular lift kits (and assuming that the driver is relatively tall.)

Here’s a great video by Fort Nine that explains how and why the shape and size of these trucks are a threat to everyone outside the vehicle.

I do this now and didn’t have to as a kid…however, I have a weird kidney problem where my kidneys will just dump water, whether or not I have the water to spare. This means that I have a minimum water requirement of 4 liters a day. It’s not as bad as when I was on a really horrible medication that started the whole issue. When I was on that medication I had to drink about 4 gallons of water a day.

End result: I have a stupid party trick where I can down a liter of fluid in about 10 seconds, and a gallon of fluid in about 5 to 10 minutes depending on how recently I’ve eaten. (I did give myself water poisoning once, but that took 8 gallons over about 14 hours)

Edit: Also, having multiple water bottles means I have somewhere to put all my awesome stickers!

Where on earth did you get the idea that I do anything besides condemn genocide?

I’m going to be honest, I’ve been speaking vicariously because I did not personally attend this protest. I wasn’t able to make it due to some personal health issues, so I’ve been talking to you from the perspective of someone who supports the protest, but did not participate. I don’t know what your problem is beyond being the kind of leftist that values purity tests over support, but I’m quite finished entertaining your notions of “debate” and wish you a good day.

I’m not eager to join them, and she spent her money in a way that was impossible to refuse. Are you saying that everyone should have abandoned the planned protest as soon as she took out that ad? Are we supposed to throw hissy fits and cancel everything we try to do because someone that doesn’t pass a purity test participates?

Unless you’re out there interrogating every single protest attendee and refusing to participate in any political action that your “undesirables” are also participating in…you’re just as much of a hypocrite as you are claiming that I am.

I am profoundly well aware of how marginalized people have been victimized for the entire duration of this country’s existence. I work in medicine, and most of my experience has been in emergency medicine. I have more experience than I ever wanted to have with trying to save people from the maw of poverty and destitution and I have been involved in social services in one way or another since childhood. My life is one of the ones on the line if shit goes sideways enough, but that doesn’t stop me from standing up to my superiors to fight for the rights and humanity of my patients, especially those who are members of marginalized groups that face more structural barriers to health than others.

I am not just an ally. My head’s on the chopping block too, and your assumption to the contrary is insulting.

The most common refrain I’ve seen from interviews with protestors is the desire for Trump to be impeached and face some semblance of the rule of law. If the billionaires want to help us make that happen, I’m happy to take their money and we can work on taxing the hell out of them when we’re not fighting for the lives of every marginalized person in this country.