A Mystery in the E.R.? Ask Dr. Chatbot for a Diagnosis.

Artificial intelligence is transforming many aspects of the practice of medicine, and some medical professionals are using these tools to help them with diagnosis. Doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess, a teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, decided to explore how chatbots could be used -- and misused -- in training future doctors. Instructors like Dr. Rodman hope that medical students can turn to GPT-4 and other chatbots for something similar to what doctors call a curbside consult -- when they pull a colleague aside and ask for an opinion about a difficult case. The idea is to use a chatbot in the same way that doctors turn to each other for suggestions and insights. For more than a century, doctors have been portrayed like detectives who gather clues and use them to find the culprit.