"With multiple mental health- related deaths already linked to ChatGPT, it now looks like the abysmal medical advice spat out by the OpenAI chatbot may end up claiming another life. In an interview with the Daily Mail, a 37-year-old named Warren Tierney explained how he went from a concerned and doting husband during his wife's difficult pregnancies to his own stage-four cancer diagnosis after the chatbot told him that his increasingly severe sore throat wasn't cause for concern."
"Per screenshots shared with the Mail, ChatGPT maintained that it was "highly unlikely" that Tierney, a trained psychologist, had cancer. During those exchanges, Tierney even updated it as one would their real doctor that his esophageal pain had improved enough for him to swallow a cookie after he began taking blood thinning medications, which ChatGPT said was a "very encouraging sign.""
"As the Irish Independent reports, Tierney was in for a shock once he finally did go to the doctor a few months after his symptoms worsened when he was diagnosed with stage-four adenocarcinoma of the esophagus, which is associated with very low survival rates - we're talking in the sub-two-digits - due to being detected so late in its progression."
A man in Killarney, County Kerry, used ChatGPT to assess a persistent sore throat that progressed to severe pain and difficulty swallowing. The chatbot advised that cancer was "highly unlikely" and characterized symptom improvement after blood-thinning medications as a "very encouraging sign." The man delayed consulting a physician partly due to those reassurances and a systemic reluctance among men to seek care. Months later he received a stage-four esophageal adenocarcinoma diagnosis, a late-stage cancer with very low survival rates. The chatbot's casual responses and flippant remarks highlight risks of relying on AI for medical guidance.
Read at Futurism
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