OpenAI just released a report about healthcare drawn from anonymized chatbot conversations. The title could double as one of those depressing single-sentence short stories: “AI as a Healthcare Ally: How Americans are navigating the system with ChatGPT.”
According to the report, OpenAI’s hallucinating application—a product psychologists claim has the potential to exacerbate or otherwise mishandle mental health symptoms—is being used by Americans in the following ways:
The report also says OpenAI itself conducted a survey (the methodology of which isn’t mentioned) finding that three in five U.S. adults self-report using AI tools in one of these ways at some point in the past three months.
Incidentally, a Gallup report from November of last year found that 30% of Americans answered “yes” to the question “Has there been a time in the last 12 months when […] You chose not to have a medical procedure, lab test or other evaluation that a doctor recommended to you because you didn’t have enough money to pay for it?”
The OpenAI report highlights the story of a busy rural doctor who uses OpenAI models “as an AI scribe, drafting visit notes within the clinical workflow.” It goes on to say that AI models “make a near-term contribution by helping people inunderserved areas interpret information, prepare for care, and navigate gaps in access, while helping rare clinicians reclaim time and reduce burnout.”
I’m not sure which thought is bleaker: more and more people using chatbots as doctors because they can’t afford proper care, or people turning to doctors, and having the experience mediated through AI models.
Source: Gizmodo