Recently, researchers have been investigating whether artificial intelligence (AI) can understand and respond to medical questions more effectively than real doctors. Their results suggest that the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’
The study, conducted by a team of medical professionals, compared nearly 200 responses from doctors and ChatGPT, an AI system. ChatGPT won in virtually every category – including accuracy, detail, and empathy – with 80% of its answers deemed to be of higher quality than those shared by doctors.
The study leader, John Ayers, works at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. He believes that AI holds the potential to revolutionize public health, but that doesn’t mean it will replace doctors. In Ayers’ view, the ideal future involves doctors using AI support to provide improved responses with more nuance, detail, and empathy.
In order to compare the two, the team took random questions from a Reddit forum called ‘AskDocs.’ The questions ranged from what to do about a bump on the head to concerns about blindness after an eye was splashed with bleach. The AI system correctly answered the questions with accurate detail and a much higher degree of pathos than the doctors.
Based on the findings of this study, it’s clear that AI has the potential to save doctors a lot of time and effort when it comes to creating high-quality, detailed answers to patient questions. And, according to Ayers, ChatGPT can even offer advice with helpful tidbits and empathy – something even the best doctors might struggle with due to their workload.
The company mentioned in this article is Qualcomm Institute which is a research institute within the University of California San Diego that focuses on research to produce technologies and products that meet social and environmental needs. The institute was established by the Qualcomm Corporation, a world leading provider of telecommunications products and services.
The person mentioned in this article is John Ayers, the vice chief of innovation in the division of infectious disease and global public health at Qualcomm Institute. He is largely credited with leading the groundbreaking study comparing ChatGPT with doctor responses that provided evidence that AI can offer higher quality information and with more empathy. He is an advocate of the potential of AI to revolutionize public health and believes that it has the potential to benefit human health care by offering doctors more effective and efficient solutions.
