What baffles me is why would you use an LLM when what you need is a digital inventory manager. Not bashing your argument's merits. On the contrary, I think it depicts very well how people will shove AI-marketed shit on already-solved problems and make everyone's lives worse because it's ✨modern✨.

Actual pharmacist here, working in pharmacy IT.

Unlike other industries, Pharmacy is not particularly thrilled about or interested in AI. In fact, my hospital explicitly blocks access to all LLMs.

I was actually kind of hoping to see what Microsoft is claiming here, and just walked away from this post more confused.

Is "pharmacists seeing more patients" really a measure of something good? I'm a non-native English speaker so cut me some slack but all I can imagine is just longer queues in the pharmacy and more tired pharmacists (and people who now need to wait in the queue now).

Suggestion: BS from MS about Al ~~helping a pharmacist~~ filling Rx

I read it as AI somehow making more people sick therefore more of them needing to go see pharmacists, therefore pharmacists seeing more patients

Even if this were true, did the pharmacists get a raise? Are they making more money? Or are they just seeing more patients (doing the extra emotional and mental labor that entails) and paying less attention to each one while Safeway and Walgreens pocket any increased revenue?

What I need is AI to fix my doctor visits. Seems like those fucks expect you to be timely but then make you wait in their waiting room for 15 minutes and then an additional 30 inside the patient room. Oh sure, our time is unimportant, it's all about you, doc.

They are using AI to help the pharmacist decrypt thedoctors's writing

I'll take the non-AI using pharmacist for the win. Thank you very much.

I am sure that AI leads to them seeing more people that need help

Expert Systems are great for pharmacies, not the bullshit generators currently labeled as "AI."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system

The pic being blurred and all, I thought it's going to be some dad joke around "pharmacist can see more patients"

I second the comment about this being a reason to reduce technician hours. Worked at the busiest store in my district the last 15 years of my career. We went from 3 pharmacists with several hours overlap on weekdays, down to 2 pharmacists with no overlap. Tech hours once was high enough to have 5 technicians on between 10-6, down to only having 5 total on staff. We went from a 24 location, down to being open only 11.5 hours a day. We were one block up from a Walgreens and one block down from a RiteAid that both ended up closing, and getting most of their customers who walked there. We had 2 major exoduses of staff and lost a good number of long time patients in the enshitification.

Even in a world where some new AI model could improve pharmacist throughput, it doesn't compare to the skeleton crewing of corporate pharmacy bottom-line-go-up.

This post could have been titled "BS from MS about Al helping an MD"

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

And because their LLM generated advice to people is bound to kill some of them, they can 'see' even more of them!