Yes, but Do Not Harm is often quite complex to figure out in practice - that's why it's "a big concept in medical ethics", and not something trivial that doesn't need to be talked about much.
> However, Mostly Good doesn't scale, because often patients need to seek medical attention more than once. Each visit then becomes an increasing risk factor of being hurt by treatment, eventually making malpractice inevitable.
True if the problem requires indefinite amount of repeat visits; false the chance of getting cured and not needing any more visits is big enough that the risk factor doesn't get a chance to grow. "Mostly good" is all we can ever get in the real world anyway; whether that's OK or not depends on the value of "mostly" in any given case.
Pedantics aside, my point is that it's better to have bad solution than to have none at all, and if some people get hurt applying it, the first instinct should be work on reducing the chance and magnitude of damage, instead of giving up entirely.
In this case: therapy is too expensive for most people who need it. The Web, and now LLMs, are poor substitutes for therapy, but they're accessible. Eliminating self-serve therapy substitutes won't make their users to come to mental health specialists instead; it'll just leave them with no help at all.
> However, Mostly Good doesn't scale, because often patients need to seek medical attention more than once. Each visit then becomes an increasing risk factor of being hurt by treatment, eventually making malpractice inevitable.
True if the problem requires indefinite amount of repeat visits; false the chance of getting cured and not needing any more visits is big enough that the risk factor doesn't get a chance to grow. "Mostly good" is all we can ever get in the real world anyway; whether that's OK or not depends on the value of "mostly" in any given case.
Pedantics aside, my point is that it's better to have bad solution than to have none at all, and if some people get hurt applying it, the first instinct should be work on reducing the chance and magnitude of damage, instead of giving up entirely.
In this case: therapy is too expensive for most people who need it. The Web, and now LLMs, are poor substitutes for therapy, but they're accessible. Eliminating self-serve therapy substitutes won't make their users to come to mental health specialists instead; it'll just leave them with no help at all.