Artificial Intelligence and its place in society is being hotly contested throughout the globe, and Dutch researchers say they have found unbelievable results in the medical field. The researchers claim that the chatbot ChatGPT was able to diagnose patients as well or better as real-life medics when given the same doctor’s medical notes on the patient.
ChatGPT was launched last year by OpenAI; it uses one of the most sophisticated language models ever developed, reports The Sun. The study’s Dr Hidde ten Berg, of Jeroen Bosch Hospital said the chatbot could help doctors reduce waiting times for patients. “We found that ChatGPT performed well in generating a list of likely diagnoses and suggesting the most likely option.”
“We also found a lot of overlap with the doctors’ lists of likely diagnoses” he added. “Simply put, this indicates that ChatGPT was able to suggest medical diagnoses much like a human doctor would.”
Researchers used details on 30 patients who were treated at Jeroen Bosch Hospital’s emergency department in 2022. Physicians’ notes on patients’ signs, symptoms and physical examinations were submitted into two versions of ChatGPT — the free 3.5 version and the subscriber 4.0 version.
The chatbots were asked to produce a list of possible diagnoses for the patients, which were then compared to real doctors’ lists. Researchers found a large overlap — around 60 per cent — between the shortlists generated by ChatGPT and the doctors.
Terrifying results showed Doctors had the correct diagnosis within their top five likely diagnoses in 87 per cent of the cases, compared to 97 per cent for ChatGPT version 3.5 and 87 per cent for version 4.0.
Dr ten Berg said “It’s vital to remember that ChatGPT is not a medical device and there are concerns over privacy when using ChatGPT with medical data…“However, there is potential here for saving time and reducing waiting times in the emergency department.
“The benefit of using artificial intelligence could be in supporting doctors with less experience, or it could help in spotting rare diseases” Dr ten Berg added. Previous research showed AI was able to pass the US Medical Licensing Exam and has a better bedside manner than real doctors. Independent experts said the Dutch study adds to research suggesting AI could one day be used to assist doctors in hospitals.