Opinion: ChatGPT is not your doctor, AI puts user health at risk |
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Artificial intelligence has percolated into nearly every facet of daily life. People are using it to analyze the news, summarize books, meal prep and write their breakup texts. AI is also serving as a personal, 24/7 pocket doctor.
In January, OpenAI announced the launch of ChatGPT Health, indicating this experience will likely become more common.
As a medical student, I’ve seen this play out across medical specialties throughout my clinical experiences. It’s not always easy to get an appointment, and as humans, we naturally worry about our health. In the past, patients often went to the clinic after Googling their symptoms.
Now, much of that information is increasingly fed into AI models and search engines. While neither scenario replaces a doctor, searching symptoms on Google often leads to articles from experts and reputable institutions. AI models, though, don’t analyze or evaluate the accuracy of the information before presenting it.
I’ve seen patients come in after using AI to summarize lab reports or MRI reports, confused about their results as AI gave them an incorrect diagnosis or misinterpreted data. Some have agonized over the possibility of a brain tumor simply because an online source suggested their migraine could........