Google flexes its health care AI muscle

Google showed off an array of new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven health care tools on Tuesday, from a souped-up chatbot that can shed light on your medical symptoms to enhanced search features that tell you if a doctor takes Medicaid. Why it matters: There's an arms race among big tech companies to infuse their products with AI -- but the results, particularly in health care, can have unwanted consequences or pitfalls, like racial bias, privacy concerns and ethical problems. Driving the news: The "large language model" that Google has been building for the medical world -- an AI chatbot called Med-PaLM 2 -- now consistently passes medical exam questions with a score of 85%, placing it at "expert" doctor level, the company said. Yes, but: Google acknowledges AI's shortcomings in the medical realm. Meanwhile: Google's conversational AI technology Duplex has called hundreds of thousands of U.S. health care providers to see if they accept Medicaid.