Martin Shkreli, who has been considered one of the most hated people in America, has found a way to pivot back into the tech industry. He recently launched a new medical AI tool called “Dr. Gupta”, a modified version of the widely popular OpenAI ChatGPT. Shkreli, who was released from prison last year after serving a sentence for securities fraud, claims his medical chatbot can be used for a variety of medical questions and may one day even replace the need for healthcare professionals.
Approaching the medical industry with an AI bot, even one derived from ChatGPT, is a potential ethical and privacy nightmare. Dr. Gupta was tested by Gizmodo using the free trial, and provided answers for questions about allergy symptoms as well as about consuming chicken that had been in the fridge for four days. However, the response was not that much different from that of ChatGPT, and it came longer than it would have taken to search on WebMD.
The AI tool serves as an alternative to search engines and one has to pay a subscription fee after asking five free questions. Questions can also be asked with one’s age, vitals, and lab test results, and the replies may be “personalized and informative”.
Shkreli’s decision to pursue a medical AI technology has come under scrutiny as he has received the nickname ‘The Most Hated Man in America’ after his company acquired the rights to a Parkinson’s treatment drug and increased its price by over five thousand percent. Even after awarding thirty seven million dollars in settlement for antitrust violations, he continues to seek out opportunities to profit from medical industry.
The accuracy and the privacy of the medical data that Dr. Gupta offers is questionable. The information provided by the AI tool could sometimes be unreliable and false since it is based on trained data from online medical journals and the web. There are many regulations involved related to health data such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act(HIPAA) which impose restrictions on companies using and sharing health data. Despite this, there is no clear vision regarding the data protection aspect of the AI tool.
As the controversy around his services grows, Vaxplo, a company in which Shkreli is an advisor, is facing increasing pressure from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to provide information on its use of medical data. This eagerness to jump back into the medical industry may well be the same tactics that earned him the unenviable reputation that he has associated with him.
