I'm always fascinated by people who somehow manage to become hate figures not once but multiple times – those who seem to not only attract public opprobrium but who actively court it, who would rather see out their time on earth in the company of an excited and enthusiastic hatemob rather than then have their passing go unnoticed. Which is why I was so tickled by this new company – Dr Gupta (that's Dr GuPTa, DO YOU SEE?!?!?!) is, I think, the first of the inevitable tsunami of AI-enabled 'disruptors' to attempt to insert itself into the consumer medical space by replacing doctors with AI…and you'll never guess who's behind it!
Go on, take a moment to have a think – which 21stC hatefigure has previous with the medical industry and is exactly the sort of miserable, grifty little sh1tweasel to jump on this bandwagon with minimal care as to exactly what the potential side-effects of offering chatbot-based medical advice to morons? Did you get it?
It's Martin Shkreli! Yes, amazing-but-true – the West's most punchable man (oh, ok, but definitely top 20) is back to SAVE MEDICINE with, er, a $20 a month subscription service that lets you ask what I presume is a custom-trained GPT medical questions and receive infinite medical 'advice' on demand. Would YOU trust your health to a black box system peddled to you by a man with Shkreli's history? If the answer is 'yes', then, well, I hope Dr Gupta takes good care of you.
Amusingly, Shkreli is apparently thinking of offering this as an enterprise product, meaning you can look forward to a host of 'doctors' offering 'advice' and 'diagnoses' based on this sort of crap – a future in which we have a new divide in healthcare provision, between those who can afford to get actual, proper medical counsel those who instead have to trust in a digital equivalent of Dr Nick Riviera to patch them up.
[via webcurios]
