The American Academy of Family Physicians is encouraging stressed doctors to use ChatGPT to ease their work, after an analysis showed that serious inaccuracies were detected in only four of 140 AI responses assessed, according to Daily Mail Online.
Stressed Doctors Encouraged to Use ChatGPT. PHOTO Shutterstock
A study by Kansas physicians affiliated with the American Academy of Family Physicians looked at how well artificial intelligence can interpret and summarize complicated medical studies, which doctors are encouraged to read to keep up with the latest research and treatment developments in their field. The research authors found that ChatGPT-3.5 (the AI model commonly used by the public) was accurate 98% of the time, providing doctors with fast and accurate study summaries in a range of specialties from cardiology and neurology in psychiatry and public health.
“Rare but important” inaccuracies
They found that the chatbot was able to produce high-quality summaries with high accuracy, even despite being given a 125-word limit to do so.
Serious inaccuracies were identified in only four of the 140 summaries produced by ChatGPT. One of these was missing a serious risk factor for a condition – (being female), another was caused by a semantic misunderstanding on the part of the automated model, while others were due to a misinterpretation of study methods .
According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, study results show that ChatGPT is “likely to be useful as a screening tool to assist busy clinicians and scientists”with the caveat that while the technology is useful for doctors, they should not rely entirely on it.
“We have concluded that the ChatGPT summaries have rare but important inaccuracies that prevent them from being considered a definitive source of truth”the researchers said.
A survey by the American Medical Association shows that two-thirds of doctors believe AI is beneficial, and 38% of them say they already use it in their daily practice.
Artificial intelligence is used in about 90% of US hospital systems, up from 53% in the second half of 2019.
With 63 percent of American doctors reporting symptoms of burnout in 2021, according to the AMA, the hope is that AI technology will help alleviate the high burnout rates that are leading to a physician shortage.
The latest findings were published in the journal Annals of Family Medicine.
