Some worry AI will replace much of the work done online.
With the recent advent and release of OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, online workers from every walk of life have raised the question, “How will AI affect my work?” From weary writers to intrigued engineers, it is hard to find a professional who has not at least once pondered the effect of AI on their job security and their respective roles in their field. That being said, one of the fields to see some of the most interesting advancements because of ChatGPT and chatbot AIs is the medical field.
While the creators of ChatGPT have been clear that their AI was not initially designed with personalized medical care in mind, there are some professionals in the field that believe that chatbot AIs might be useful to supplement and enhance patient care experiences. By using ChatGPT, patients will be able to get real-time medical information regarding their care, and general information about their conditions and medicines.
Historically, medical AI has been unable to adapt and change to meet the needs of the fast-paced, ever-changing nature of medical diagnostics and care, especially for online workers. Older AI models have been unable to keep up with simple tasks asked of them, and therefore have been met with scrutiny in the field. That being said, with ChatGPT’s capabilities, many medical professionals have a renewed hope for AI’s place in the medical field.
In a study by Vanderbilt University Medical Center, researchers compared the quality of 36 AI generated diagnostic responses to those of 29 human responses. 9 of the top 20 responses were generated by ChatGPT.
Even so, many people still have major reservations about the place of AI in the medical field. Not only have many people cited concerns about privacy as the AI learns from their sensitive information, but they also worry that the AI could potentially give confidently incorrect information. It has not been unheard of that modern AI’s will accidentally answer questions citing incorrect information based off of the information they have cobbled together online. This is a startling concern when dealing with medical information and is certainly one of the reasons that medical AI are still under development and not yet in common use. This does not discredit the technology’s place in the field though.
On the contrary, ChatGPT and other AI have been used with great success in administrative tasks for online workers such as record filing, patient check-in and check-out, helping patients navigate medical paperwork, and even help with language barriers. There has been concern however with how AI might utilize the information it collects about patients, and how secure an AI like ChatGPT might actually be for the collection of medical information.
Being a fairly new technology ChatGPT, and other AI are changing every day. While many of the concerns currently voiced about the AI software are valid, there are many people working to address these concerns so that ChatGPT and other AI might become more commonplace within the medical field. At the moment, there are too many unknown variables for most medical professionals to securely rely on ChatGPT, but many believe that with time and further development, these technologies could revolutionize the face of healthcare.
Sources:
ChatGPT for health care providers: Can the AI chatbot make the professionals’ jobs easier?
‘It Is Crazy!’ The Promise and Potential Peril of ChatGPT
ChatGPT is poised to upend medical information. For better and worse.
