A new study has found that an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot called ChatGPT outperforms physicians when it comes to answering patient questions. An assessment was made on the quality of responses as well as the empathy level. Evaluators in the study preferred the chatbot’s responses to those of physicians in 78.6% of the cases.
The chatbot’s responses were rated to be of significantly higher quality than those of the physicians (t=13.3, P<0.001). The chatbot responses were judged to be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ in quality 78.5% of the times compared to that of 22.1% for the physician’s responses. The chatbot responses were 3.6 times more likely to be given a high quality rating.
Furthermore, the chatbot’s responses were found to be significantly more empathetic than those given by the physicians (t=18.9, P<0.001). The proportion of responses judged to be empathetic or highly empathetic (≥4) was much higher for the chatbot (45.1%) than for the physicians (4.6%), an almost ten-fold difference.
John Ayers, the lead researcher from Qualcomm Institute at the University of California San Diego, commented that their study shows that the chatbot ‘wins in a landslide’ when compared to physicians. He believes that AI-assisted messaging has the potential to improve patient outcomes, relieving the burden on healthcare professionals.
Jonathan H. Chen and co-authors wrote that AI technology can be integrated into medical practice but its potential to worsen existing bias or harm patients also has to be considered. Teva Brender similarly wrote that the burden on physicians and burnout levels may be reduced with the implementation of AI-assisted technology, but the potential harms have to be taken into account.
OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT and has led the way forward in the research of AI-assisted messaging. Their chatbot promises to ease the burden of paperwork and other text-based tasks for physicians. As more studies are conducted, OpenAI hopes to evaluate the effects of their AI-model further and account for potential patient outcomes.
The person mentioned in this article is John Ayers, PhD, MA, who is from the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla. He is the lead researcher and the one behind the study. He has commented about the superiority of ChatGPT and the potential of AI-assisted messaging to improve patient outcomes.
OpenAI is the company mentioned in this article. They are the creators of ChatGPT and have spearheaded the research of AI-assisted messaging. OpenAI has received much appreciation and recognition due to their ground-breaking idea, which has the potential to alleviate the burden on healthcare professionals and boost patient outcomes.
