Dr. AI?

February 18th, 2023| Topic: RaMbLeS | 2

I’m in trouble. As a doc. And you’re in trouble. As a patient.

Two artificial intelligence (AI) programs—including ChatGPT (= Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, launched in November 2022)—have passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). This is the standardized examination, given in three steps, to all medical graduates desiring to practice in the US of A.

Two research groups demonstrated this recently, publishing their work in medRxiv as “Performance of ChatGPT on USMLE” (from Harvard School of Medicine, Brown University, and Open AI, the developers of ChatGPT), and in arXiv as “Large Language Models Encode Clinical Knowledge” (from Google).

The first paper showed that ChatGPT was able to perform at greater than 50% accuracy across all steps of the exams, and even achieved 60% in most of their analyses. (The passing threshold of USMLE exams vary, but have generally been around 60% most years.)

ChatGPT performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any specialized training or reinforcement. Additionally, ChatGPT demonstrated a high level of concordance and insight in its explanations.”

The second paper evaluated another large language model, Flan-PaLM (sounds like a dessert to me). This one was modified to prepare for the exams, using a collection of medical Q&A databases. And guess what? Flan-PaLM achieved 67.6% accuracy in answering the USMLE questions.

I’d better find a new job. And you’d better download ChatGPT and tell it all your problems for diagnosis and treatment.

Oh, and there have also been a few cases where ChatGPT has been listed as an author on research papers! What can it not do?

(In fact, I have to preach at Southern Seminary’s Chapel this Tuesday. Maybe I’ll try to get ChatGPT concoct me a sermon.)

But anyways, Dr. AI is taking over, is what I wanted to say.

Not exactly. Unless God heals, every doctor’s efforts are in vain.

Bless Yahweh, my soul,
and all that is within me—His holy name.
Bless Yahweh, my soul, …
the one who pardons all your iniquities,
the one who heals all your diseases, …
the one who satiates your life with good:
your youth is renewed like an eagle.
Psalm 103:1–3, 5

Yup, only God!

Yahweh, my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.
Yahweh, You brought up, from Sheol, my soul;
You kept me alive, [apart] from those going down to the grave.
Psalm 30:2–3

And the greatest act of healing that God does?

He [Jesus Christ] Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross,
so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness;
for by His wounds you were healed.
1 Peter 2:24

That was essentially quoting …

But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

And that ultimate healing from sin is given to all who place their trust in Jesus Christ as their only God and Savior from sin, who did his marvelous work on the cross, dying for us, and rising on the third day.

Jesus said:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
John 3:16

Healed unto eternal life!

In fact, soon after the Exodus, God introduced himself to the people he had saved this way:

I, Yahweh, am your healer
[’ani yhwh roph’eka].
Exodus 15:26

Yes, bless the Lord, indeed, for his being our healer!

SOURCES: MedScape; medRxiv; arXiv