McCord: Centralized AI medical advice risks suppressing effective, unsanctioned treatments
Brendan McCord · AI Expert: What Scares Me Most (Here's What I Found): Brendan McCord · Jun 19, 2025 · at 1:10:51
AI technologist Brendan McCord and Codie Sanchez discuss the risks of relying on large language models for medical diagnoses and personal health decisions.
0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The reason I invoke this is because when you have a small number of AI systems that have the role of giving this medical advice, like they may suppress treatments that work, but are not kind of like sanctioned, if you will. And if that happens, like a lifesaving treatment or an angle that was like underexplored could be withheld.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Brendan McCord
McCord: Top AI lab leaders privately believe AI should direct human actions
“At the top labs, the AI labs that are really driving this, a lot of people behind closed doors believe that we should in fact do that, that we're being foolish rebels. If we don't listen to artificial intelligence, tell us what to do.”
McCord: Having sex with robots will weaken human capacity for democracy
“The other thing is having sex with robots is going to make us worse at democracy.”
McCord: Existing AI provides decades of profitable deployment even without new advances
“Technology, even if it's immediately available, takes a long time to like propagate. In other words, you could stop right now. Google just did its big announcement, like stop, pause, you know, nothing else. And we would have, A few decades of like very profita…”
McCord: Universal Basic Income is a guaranteed way to levelize an economy
“UBI Crucially separates, like, untethers one's contribution from one's reward. And I don't mean this in a kind of moralistic way, like we need contributors. I think we do need contributors, but I mean that the price mechanism in markets is the thing that tells…”
McCord: AI Mediates 20% of Human Waking Life
“The stuff we're building now, mind blowing statistic, but it mediates, meaning AI mediates, 20%
Of waking life.”
McCord: Universities Produce Narrow Technicians or Conforming Ideologues
“You look across the landscape and you see universities almost without exception as being a place where people who are either narrow
In their specialization, narrow technician or conforming ideologue who really is not thinking about these questions very deeply.”