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443 points jaredwiener | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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davidcbc ◴[] No.45032380[source]
This is a clear example of why the people claiming that using a chatbot for therapy is better than no therapy are... I'll be extremely generous and say misguided. This kid wanted his parents to know he was thinking about this and the chatbot talked him out of it.
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UltraSane ◴[] No.45034881[source]
I don't know if it counts as therapy or not but I find the ability to have intelligent (seeming?) conversations with Claude about the most incredibly obscure topics to be very pleasant.
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hattmall ◴[] No.45035009[source]
But do you really feel you are conversing? I could never get that feeling. It's not a conversation to me it's just like an on-demand book that might be wrong. Not saying I don't use them to attempt to get information, but it certainly doesn't have a feeling than doing anything other than getting information out of a computer.
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UltraSane ◴[] No.45035159[source]
"But do you really feel you are conversing?"

Yes. For topics with lots of training data like physics Claude is VERY human sounding. I've had very interesting conversations with Claude Opus about the Boltzmann brain issue and how I feel that the conventional wisdom ignores the low probability of a BBrain having a spatially and temporally consistent set of memories and how the fact that brains existing in a universe that automatically creates consistent memories means the probability of us being Boltzmann brains is very low. Since even if a Boltzmann brain pops into existence its memory will be most likely completely random and completely insane/insensate.

There aren't a lot of people who want to talk about Boltzmann brains.

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furyofantares ◴[] No.45035537[source]
It sounds like you're mostly just talking to yourself. Which is fine, but being confused about that is where people get into trouble.
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UltraSane ◴[] No.45035627[source]
"It sounds like you're mostly just talking to yourself"

No, Claude does know a LOT more than I do about most things and does push back on a lot of things. Sometimes I am able to improve my reasoning and other times I realize I was wrong.

Trust me, I am aware of the linear algebra behind the curtain! But even when you mostly understand how they work the best LLMs today are very impressive. And latent spaces fundamentally new way to index data.

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ceejayoz ◴[] No.45035820[source]
> No, Claude does know a LOT more than I do about most things…

Plenty of people can confidently act like they know a lot without really having that knowledge.

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1. UltraSane ◴[] No.45038812[source]
So you are denying that LLMs actually contain real knowledge?
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2. habinero ◴[] No.45040055[source]
They contain training data and a statistical model that might generate something true or it might generate garbage, both with equal confidence. You need to already know the answer to determine which is which.
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3. UltraSane ◴[] No.45041333[source]
Have you actually used Claude Opus 4.1? It is right far more than it is wrong.
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4. habinero ◴[] No.45043321{3}[source]
How could you know?
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5. UltraSane ◴[] No.45044179{4}[source]
How can you?
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6. habinero ◴[] No.45050715{5}[source]
Because I don't rely on a glorified text generator for what's true lol
7. UltraSane ◴[] No.45050781{4}[source]
How do you react to comments like this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44980896#44980913

I believe it absolutely should be, and it can even be applied to rare disease diagnosis.

My child was just saved by AI. He suffered from persistent seizures, and after visiting three hospitals, none were able to provide an accurate diagnosis. Only when I uploaded all of his medical records to an AI system did it immediately suggest a high suspicion of MOGAD-FLAMES — a condition with an epidemiology of roughly one in ten million.

Subsequent testing confirmed the diagnosis, and with the right treatment, my child recovered rapidly.

For rare diseases, it is impossible to expect every physician to master all the details. But AI excels at this. I believe this may even be the first domain where both doctors and AI can jointly agree that deployment is ready to begin.