The era of Doctor AI is already here

"Too often people are using this as an expert and not as an assistant. We've made accessibility to medical information and medical judgment so hard in this country, and ChatGPT makes it so easy. The idea that these tools have to be as good as a physician is absurd given how much more convenient they are."

"I think there's a risk of bad things happening. Is it dangerous? I think the status quo is dangerous. The question is without it, what would you have done? This frames AI not as inherently dangerous but contextual to existing healthcare accessibility challenges."

"A recent study published in Nature found that ChatGPT under-triaged about half of health care emergencies in a test performed by researchers. Karan Singhal, who leads the company's health AI team, said its latest GPT-5 models correctly refer emergency cases nearly 99% of the time."

ChatGPT processes over 40 million health-related questions daily from approximately 200 million users weekly, yet clinical deployment discussions often ignore this widespread direct-to-consumer use. Medical experts debate appropriate AI integration in healthcare, acknowledging that while AI shouldn't replace doctors, it provides accessible medical information when professional care is unavailable or inaccessible. Concerns exist about users treating AI as expert rather than assistant, though some argue current healthcare accessibility challenges make convenient AI tools valuable. Recent studies show ChatGPT under-triaged emergency cases, though newer models demonstrate improved emergency case referral accuracy. The fundamental question centers on AI's practical utility given existing healthcare system limitations.

Read at Axios