The ChatGPT chatbot has proven to be a better advisor than doctors for patients seeking medical advice. His answers turned out to be more detailed and empathetic, concluded scientists who published research in magazine JAMA Internal Medicine.
In the scientific community, there has long been a debate about how progress in the field of artificial intelligence systems can help in medical matters. In the study published in the journal, lead author John W. Ayers, MD, MA, of San Diego State University, said the shift to virtual health care due to COVID-19 has resulted in many patients not receiving adequate attention from doctors . In his opinion, ChatGPT can become an effective tool for solving this problem.
Scientists led by John Ayers from the University of California, San Diego, tried to use the famous neural network chatbot ChatGPT to generate treatment advice for patients instead of doctors. In their research, they wanted to answer the question, can ChatGPT accurately answer patients' questions to their doctors?
To get at their disposal a large corpus of real questions from patients to doctors, scientists turned to Reddit's AskDocs platform, where each of the 452 registered users can ask medical questions, which are answered by professional doctors.
The researchers collected 195 random questions and answers from Reddit, where users asked for advice on various medical cases. ChatGPT then answered these questions. A panel of three other professional doctors then blindly rated the responses of their colleagues and the chatbot on the quality and level of empathy criteria and selected the responses, with ChatGPT scoring higher in the categories of response quality and empathy than the doctors.
It found that doctors chose ChatGPT answers 79% of the time. "ChatGPT responses were more detailed and accurate, containing more aspects of the patient's queries than the physician responses," explained co-author Jessica Kelly. The bot's answers were classified as high-quality or "fairly high-quality" 3,6 times more often than the answers of doctors. Also, they were 10 times more likely to be recognized as more "empathic".
“Never thought I'd say this, but ChatGPT prescriptions are something I'd like to receive in the mail. This tool will change the way I help my patients," says co-author Aaron Goodman.
Scientists note that, despite the positive results of the study, it is still too early to implement chatbots in the practice of treating patients, and additional research is needed.
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