The ChatGPT chatbot has proven to be a better advisor than doctors for patients seeking medical advice. His responses were more detailed and empathetic, the scientists concluded. published JAMA internal medicine study.
The scientific community has long discussed how advances in artificial intelligence systems can help in medical matters. These discussions have become particularly relevant after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, against which the workload of doctors has increased sharply and the number of patient complaints sent electronically has increased.
Scientists led by John Ayers at the University of California, San Diego tried to use the now-famous ChatGPT neural network chatbot to generate treatment advice from patients instead of doctors. In their study, they wanted to answer the question: Is ChatGPT able to accurately answer patients’ questions to their doctors?
To provide them with a large corpus of real questions from patients to doctors, the scientists turned to the platform Reddit’s AskDocs where each of the 452,000 registered users can ask medical questions, which are answered by professional doctors.
A total of 195 questions were selected, to which professionals gave their answers, after which the chatbot gave its answers. Then, a group of three other professional doctors blindly evaluated the answers of their colleagues and the chatbot on the criterion of quality and level of empathy and chose one or the other answer.
It turned out that doctors chose ChatGPT answers in 79% of cases. “The ChatGPT responses contained more detailed and specific information, containing more aspects of the patient’s requests, than the physician responses,” explained co-author Jessica Kelly. Robot responses were rated as high quality or “very high quality” 3.6 times more often than physician responses. They were also 10 times more likely to be considered more “empathetic”.
“I never thought I would say this, but ChatGPT regulations are what I would love to receive in my mail. This tool is going to change the way I help my patients,” says co-author Aaron Goodman.
The scientists note that despite the positive results of the study, it is still too early to introduce chatbots into the practice of treating patients, and more research is needed.
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