My Cancer and My AI
The pros and cons of getting sick in the age of LLMs
A little more than five months ago, while sitting at my desk failing to get work done, I noticed a lump on the right side of my neck, just below my jaw. So I did the natural thing: I asked a large language model whether I should be worried.
The LLM suggested I consult a human. The lump could be an enlarged lymph node, it said, but an enlarged lymph node can be caused by various things, some worrying and some not.
Three months later, I was getting the first of two intravenous infusions of immunotherapy, intended to help my immune system fight cancer. And six weeks after that—four weeks ago—I was under general anesthesia getting two kinds of surgery: 1) surgery on my neck, to remove the cancerous lymph node along with 20 or so other lymph nodes for further study; and 2) surgery on my throat, to remove the tumor that had been ground zero for the cancer.
I seem to be fine now. No further therapy will be required unless the cancer recurs—which, according to the stats I’ve seen, probably won’t happen.
It’s been an interesting five months, and one of the most interesting things about it was the way my interaction with AI shaped the experience—in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. This week, in the first podcast I’ve recorded since surgery, I discussed the whole experience with regular podcast partner Paul Bloom, paying special attention to the role of AI.
Video of that part of our conversation is below, and below that video is a little video afterthought I taped—something I meant to say in the conversation with Paul but never got around to saying, and something that connects my experience to a piece Paul wrote for this week’s New Yorker about AI as way to fight loneliness.
The entire conversation with Paul (which gets into such subjects as Jeffrey Epstein, the new Superman movie, and Elon’s Grok issues) can be found on the NonZero YouTube channel or podcast feed. The excerpt below, about my cancer experience, starts with the part of the story where I ask the AI about the lump in my neck.
Needless to say, I’m happy to be back (and newly grateful to be at all).