AI, Ear, Nose, and Throat

After the past couple weeks of news ingestion, my physical and mental symptomology reads like a list of potential side-effects described at the end of a prescription medication commercial. I was about a tenth of the way into the list — nausea, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, dry mouth, constipation, insomnia, rash, itching, swelling, difficulty breathing, blurred vision, hearing loss, laptop-phobia, phone allergy, FOBI (Fear Of Being Informed), and a strange full body-covering orange-y jaundice — when my doctor interrupted to say it was time for him to see his next patient. Maybe I should have started with ChatGPT. Many of us have long been presenting our doctors with the results of a Google-powered self-diagnosis. But AI could take things to the next level. In a small, interesting study, ChatGPT actually outdid human doctors when it came to diagnosing illnesses, even when those doctors were armed with ChatGPT. Gina Kolata in the NYT (Gift Article): A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness. I tried to test AI with my own list of symptoms, but ChatGPT said it didn’t have any available appointments until mid-February.