If you’ve been keeping up with the world of artificial intelligence, you’re probably somewhat familiar with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence that can produce text-based information. You can ask the chatbot a question and it will quickly send back an answer based on information it has sourced from millions of online databases.
You can ask ChatGPT for answers to simple or complex questions, and it will do its best to answer them, and it should come as no surprise that the technology is being closely monitored in the medical community. The latest version of the AI chatbot made some significant strides, and it may soon be an effective tool for doctors all around the world. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at some of the advancements the technology has made in recent weeks.
ChatGPT and The Future Of Medicine
The latest version of ChatGPT, named ChatGPT-4, has already started making some waves in the medical community. Recently, the AI tool was found to answer US medical licensing exam questions correctly more than 90 percent of the time, but it’s better than a simple test taker. Proponents say that it can perform a number of other tasks that could prove valuable in a healthcare setting, including:
- Translating medical information from one language to another.
- Taking complex medical jargon and turning it into information that is understandable to a patient or child.
- Providing tips to doctors on how to talk about illnesses and conditions with a patient in a clear manner.
- Summarizing lengthy medical texts.
- Providing a diagnosis based on specific information inputs.
Of course, the technology cannot diagnose with 100 percent accuracy, but it has shown some impressive promise. Dr. Isaac Kohane, who studied the technology in part to write a book called The AI Revolution In Medicine, found that ChatGPT-4 was able to diagnose a 1:100,000 condition based on notes provided from a physical exam and information from an ultrasound and hormone level test.
“On the one hand, I was having a sophisticated medical conversation with a computational process. On the other hand, just as mind blowing was the anxious realization that millions of families would soon have access to this impressive medical expertise, and I could not figure out how we could guarantee or certify that GPT-4’s advice would be safe or effective,” said Dr. Kohane.
However, there are still plenty of limitations. Dr. Kohane noted numerous instances where the chatbot made clerical errors or math mistakes, and there are concerns about the ethics of some of its recommendations. So while we are still in the infancy of AI technology, ChatGPT seems to be rapidly improving, and it seems likely that AI-driven medicine will be a powerful force in the near future. Hopefully we can continue to hammer out the kinks to keep patients and providers safe when relying on the technology.