Be Wary of Using AI for Medical Advice!
If I had a dollar for every time I was asked in the clinic “what do you think about what AI told me about [BLANK]?”, I’d be retired by now!
Listen, artificial intelligence (AI) can be a helpful for tool for some things, but it truly should not be your primary source of medical information. Some doctors like to say, “I didn’t realize your Google searches trump my medical degree and experience.” As the years go on, the more true this is becoming.
I have a big, long soapbox about why I don’t like AI. If we’ve had a conversation about it recently, you probably know this soapbox! My personal opinion is that AI is making us lazy, among other things. All of the internet’s information is at our fingertips at lightning-quick speed, rendering critical thinking and research obsolete, right?
WRONG!
Let’s begin:
1. AI likes to hallucinate. This means that it will confidently tell you the answer to something when it is blatantly wrong. If you don’t independently verify what it’s telling you, and therefore you take the AI’s answer at face value, you can easily get manipulated and hurt.
2. Diagnostic capability. Your AI model of choice (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, etc) does not know your full medical history. It shouldn’t know your full medical history. Your medical record is one of the most important and private things that you have. Don’t share it with a company that will do God-knows-what with it! Asking AI for medical help diagnosing a condition will likely result in a wrong answer because it doesn’t know who you fully are. It can’t run tests on you or examine you. There’s no replacement for a healthcare provider.
3. Misinformation spreads like wildfire. AI is using all of the available information online to help you answer your question. Guess what? Not everything online is true or accurate! If you’re running a science experiment, for example, and the independent variables and data you put in are flawed, your results and dependent variables are flawed too.
I had someone in my office earlier this year who came in after a major hip surgery and said, “ChatGPT told me it was time to start running again. It said that if I can run for 1 minute, then I can run for 5 minutes. So I’ve been running 5 minutes on with a 1 minute walking rest break, then continuing. Now my hip hurts. I don’t get it. Why?”
I don’t think I’ve ever face-palmed so hard in my life.
This is not what return to running programs look like after major lower extremity surgery. After a long discussion about safety, we fixed the issue and the patient is fine now. But this could have been prevented by communicating with their healthcare provider before beginning!
So please, if you choose to use AI in your everyday life, be careful! This is especially true with your health. You only have the one body. Treat it with care and respect.
And for those wondering, no, this blog post (nor any other blog post I’ve ever written) was not produced with the help of AI. Use your brains, everyone! Use it or lose it!