So, there's a narrow response to this and a broader one. Narrow first. Suppose there is a blanket ban on medical information (what I think you are suggesting). Does this encompass asking about supplements? How to make a healthy dinner? Can you replace butter with olive oil? Or generate a workout program? These are not clear boundaries, and opening up LLMs to regulation on these lines can open pretty extensive government interference.
Right now, those exemplars are generally NOT considered medical information, although advertising for supplements are required to include disclaimers along the lines of “these claims have not been assessed for accuracy by the (relevant agency)”
And if those ads don’t include such language or if they make overt medical claims (“Our colloidal silver serum cures COVID”), they can face hefty fines and other penalties.
At the very least, any LLM programmed to yield results for medical questions should be required to return OBVIOUS and CLEARLY WORDED disclaimers, which would also
not fully shield the LLM’s owner operators from UPM liability
Or, if they must return accurate information--measles was brought up earlier. I can imagine scenarios where a prompt would yield: "I'm sorry Dave, as a LLM I can't provide medical information. I can redirect you to the trusted authorities on this subject". The LLM then redirects you to a FDA page that says the measles vaccine is bunk.
If the otherwise reputable FDA page is distributing misinformation like that, it’s not the LLM’s fault. Nor is it the LLM’s fault if the FDA or other trusted resource has been compromised & contaminated with inaccurate info (deliberately or not) and this corruption has not yet been detected.
If the LLM is including links to known hucksters, snake oil salesmen and the like in its responses, then that should be legally actionable, at least under a negligence or recklessness theory. It might rise to deliberate malfeasance if its
publicly released version was programmed or subsequently altered to include such results if earlier versions originally excluded them.
More broadly. I think the phrase "general public getting access to info they can't assess the accuracy of" is condescending. That's not to say entirely wrong; but people can sense the attitude and it sabotages trust in authority. No one wants to see a doctor who thinks they're too stupid to wash their own hands.
I’m being realistic, not condescending.
As mentioned, my Dad is an MD. He has an MPH as well. I’ve grown up with medical discussions on a regular basis and even worked in his practice for decades.
One recurring topic in our household is how bad people are at evaluating info their doctors give them. Even pre-COVID, we discussed studies illustrating how common it was for patients to come in
demanding treatments or pharmaceuticals completely unrelated to their symptoms or even final diagnoses. (That’s part of the history behind why antibiotics got overprescribed.)
Post-COVID, he had to deal with patients who couldn’t comprehend the odds of getting myocarditis from the vaccine were a fraction of the odds of getting it from COVID itself. Or that oxygen molecules are orders of magnitude smaller than viruses, so there’s no way a mask that could dangerously restrict airflow would still let a coronavirus pass freely.
Then there’s the whole antivax movement, and people who don’t understand that you can’t catch a disease from vaccines using killed viruses.
There’s people who believe that vaccines need to be 100% effective to be effective healthcare tools, so anything less is not worth doing or worse, a scam of some kind. I’ve seen people post
that position on multiple boards, including ENWorld.
Etc.
So forgive my dim view of laymen evaluating much beyond the most basic medical information.
I think if people approach LLMs through this kind of "content must be expert approved" angle, it will exacerbate the decline in trust discussed earlier in the thread. Show your work and let people see that you are doing a good job, rather than bludgeoning them with credentials. Then they might trust you when you say the measles vaccine is a good idea.
When public healthcare officials in the USA repeatedly revised their assessments of the dangers of COVID and prevention methods as they gathered new information, a sizable percentage of my fellow countrymen thought they were being
deliberately lied to.
As a result of that mistrust of doctors & health department officials publicly updating everything ASAP, there are now strong movements in certain states to ban ALL mandatory vaccinations, including those with safety records going back decades, like the polio & MMR vaccines. We’re seeing more and larger outbreaks of entirely preventable diseases here.
What I can do for you as a qualified attorney:
What you remain responsible for:
