Google’s Med-PaLM 2, an AI chatbot that’s designed to answer questions about an individual’s medical information and records, is currently being tested at the Mayo Clinic research hospital as well as other hospitals. Med-PaLM 2 is a variant of PaLM 2 which was announced in May this year at Google I/O.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Google believes that this updated model could potentially be helpful in countries with “more limited access to doctors.” Unlike generalised chatbots such as Google’s Bard, Bing or ChatGPT, Med-PaLM 2 will offer better healthcare conversations and seemingly take the place of an available doctor that’s able to converse with patients regarding their healthcare and well-being.
READ MORE – Final Fantasy 9 Remake Will be Turn-Based, New Details Leak – Report
Unfortunately, Google warns that the technology isn’t perfect (at least not yet). A research paper published by Google in May showed that Med-PaLM 2 is still inaccurate in some cases. The study reveals that physicians found more inaccuracies and irrelevant information in the AI-generated answers provided by Med-PaLM and Med-PaLM 2 than most human doctors.
However, the study concluded that Med-PaLM 2 succeeded in almost every other test, showing reasoning, consensus-supported answers and correct comprehension. Furthermore, customers who use Med-PaLM 2 will be able to control their data, meaning it will be encrypted and Google won’t have access to it. For the time being, the AI medical chatbot is still in its early stages and Google might need to work on the technology a bit more before it’s able to completely stand in for actual doctors.
Naturally, there’s been some apprehension from the community regarding the implementation of AI into society, especially in demanding fields such as health care where most patients would rather have a human perspective as opposed to a robot.
The use of AI also extends into other industries as well. Amidst the writer’s strike in Hollywood that started earlier this year, several studios began exploring AI to potentially write movie and television scripts when human writers weren’t available. It remains to be seen if AI will become advanced enough that it begins replacing jobs – a perfectly valid, growing fear right now.
Source: The Wall Street Journal