Dangerous use of AI in health threads

[saraclara]

Can you please discourage the use of unattributed AI results in health/medical threads?
On a thread about blood test results, a poster gave entirely misleading information to a very worried OP, after feeding the wrong information into AI.

I've reported it, but I really think that mnhq has a role in this and should discourage such use of AI. Also please encourage posters to report any further such incidents so that they can be deleted.

I hate ai but it’s no worse than people giving totally wrong opinions (see thread where op’s child has skin discolouration and people are giving out to the op for sunburn prevention measures).

But anyone who takes some random persons / bots advice for a health issues off the internet is ridiculous
you cannot police it and posters have to take personal responsibility as well

I agree that people can give just as bad advice, but many people give more credence to it if "a computer said it". There's some kind of equating a LLM with a calculator spitting out the correct answer to a sum.

I'm all for banning AI , and let's please ban the lazy copy-pasting of AI results, but it will be informing posters in unknown ways anyway.

The problem with using AI is that the use of language makes the advice sound very authoritative, and someone in a panic might assume that the poster is a medical professional.

Obviously they shouldn't assume that of any poster, but not everyone is perfectly savvy, particularly under stress. I think that at the very least, encouraging others to report those posts would be good

Exactly this - it reads as fact. I pointed this out on that thread to the poster who quoted AI.

I don’t trust AI and I don’t think anyone should take what it spits out as truth. Admittedly I only asked it to confirm the bus time and it was 11 minutes out, but anyone using it for serious issues needs to be wary.

I’m astonished at how easily everyone has switched off their own brain in favour of AI

One difficulty may be that as soon as MN gets involved in policing health threads, they could technically be seen as endorsing the answers that are left.

The best that MN can do is probably to reinforce the message not to get health advice from posters but from reliable sources.

Totally agree with this , I had quite a spat last year on the autoimmune board when someone claiming to be an endocrinology secretary was spouting absolute rubbish and accused me of spreading misinformation, which I wasn’t . People really shouldn’t use this type of forum for medical advice .

Hello @saraclara if not already, please do report posts to us. We would tend to approach this on a case-by-case basis. Thank you.

Thanks, Becky. I hope others will too, but I suspect not.

Out of interest, have there been general discussions at MNHQ about AI posts and how they are managed/might need to be managed in the future? I can imagine that there's a potential risk factor for Mumsnet

I had a post deleted for pointing this exact thing out on a thread 🤷‍♀️

If I look up medical advice I always type "UK..." and then the question. When it shows the results I ignore everything until I see an NHS link. I have no trust in AI or US ads posing as medical fact.

Personally I think anyone saying they are a doctor etc should be verified first and all AI posts should have to be stated as such.

Anyone who actually is a doctor is very unwise if their post doesn't include something to the effect that they don't have enough information (as would normally be obtained by seeing and examining the person) to give specific advice but general advice would be (NHS link) and they should see their own doctor or seek x source of help.

Anyone saying they are a doctor and giving specific medical advice (other than clear signposting and how to access help) is either
-not a doctor, or
-a doctor whose advice you probably don't want to be taking

(All in my opinion, obviously.)