"ChatGPT" diagnoses a child's illness after 17 doctors fail to do so

ChatGPT, a program that uses artificial intelligence, helped a mother determine the cause of her son's debilitating pain, which has continued for three years, after many doctors failed to do so.

Courtney said her son Alex began experiencing difficult symptoms when he was four years old, during the coronavirus lockdown. He started chewing things, which made his family wonder if he was suffering from tooth decay. After the dentist examined him and found nothing wrong, Alex was referred to an orthodontist, who found that his palate was too small. This can cause trouble sleeping, and Alex's family thought this might be part of the reason he wasn't feeling well.

The orthodontist treated Alex by placing an expander in his palate, which gave his family temporary relief. "Everything was a little better," Courtney said. But Alex continued to suffer, and Courtney soon noticed that her son had stopped growing, and that he was not walking in the correct way for a child of his age, and that he was suffering from severe headaches and fatigue, according to Business Insider.

Courtney's family met with a number of experts to try to find out what disease Alex was suffering from, including a pediatrician, a neurologist, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and more. Finally, Courtney said they consulted 17 doctors, but were left frustrated with no answers. None of the recommended treatments solved the problem.

After three years of doctor's appointments, Courtney turned to the GBT chat app for answers. The chatbot, created by OpenAI and released in 2022, was designed to dialogue with people in a conversational manner.

“I went line by line through everything that was in the MRI notes and put the information on the GPT chat,” Courtney said. Trying the app led Courtney to discover tethered cord syndrome, and she then made an appointment with a new neurosurgeon who confirmed that Alex had a tethered spinal cord as a result of spina bifida occulta, a birth defect that causes problems with the development of the spinal cord. This is the mildest form of spina bifida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which notes that the condition is often not discovered until later in a child's life.

Researchers are already investigating the effects of GBT in medicine. A research paper published in May in the journal Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence stated that the technology has both benefits and drawbacks in this field, as “potential applications of GPT chat in the medical field range from identifying potential research topics, to assisting specialists in clinical and laboratory diagnosis.” ". She continued: “Despite its potential applications, the use of GBT chat and other artificial intelligence tools in medical writing also raises ethical and legal concerns.”

Source Business Insider - Published on Thursday 14 September 2023