Physicians are turning to ChatGPT to craft more empathetic responses to patients, The New York Times reported June 12.
Michael Pignone, MD, chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas at Austin, and his team employed the artificial intelligence chatbot to address patients who have been drinking too much but have not been helped by behavioral health therapy, according to the story. They asked ChatGPT to write a compassionate script at a fifth-grade reading level. It responded:
"If you think you drink too much alcohol, you're not alone. Many people have this problem, but there are medicines that can help you feel better and have a healthier, happier life."
"Doctors are famous for using language that is hard to understand or too advanced," Christopher Moriates, MD, co-principal investigator of the project at University of Texas at Austin, told The Times. "It is interesting to see that even words we think are easily understandable really aren't."
While some physicians express skepticism about the usefulness or consistency of ChatGPT's responses — or the need for AI to augment their compassion — others swear by it, according to the story. Isaac Kohane, PhD, a professor of biomedical informatics at Boston-based Harvard Medical School, has used it to quickly evaluate if patients qualify for a federal program for people with undiagnosed diseases, while Richard Stern, MD, got a payer to change its mind on covering a medication thanks to a ChatGPT-generated appeal. "It's like a new world," Dr. Stern told the newspaper.