F.D. Flam, Columnist

We’re Not Ready to Be Diagnosed by ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence can ace medical exams and assess patient symptoms, but it doesn’t care whether you live or die.

April 15, 2023 at 6:00 AM UTC

By F.D. Flam

F.D. Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering science. She is host of the “Follow the Science” podcast.

Let a robot do that.
Photographer: Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images

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AI may not care whether humans live or die, but tools like ChatGPT will still affect life-and-death decisions — once they become a standard tool in the hands of doctors. Some are already experimenting with ChatGPT to see if it can diagnose patients and choose treatments. Whether this is good or bad hinges on how doctors use it.

GPT-4, the latest update to ChatGPT, can get a perfect score on medical licensing exams. When it gets something wrong, there’s often a legitimate medical dispute over the answer. It’s even good at tasks we thought took human compassion, such as finding the right words to deliver bad news to patients.