On Tuesday, Elon Musk dropped a new bombshell. The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive officer posted on X (formerly Twitter) encouraging his followers to submit X-rays, PET scans, MRIs or other medical images to Grok, his new AI chatbot. Musk launched Grok, a product of his company xAI, in 2023.
“This is still early stage, but it is already quite accurate and will become extremely good,” Musk wrote. He asked people to report back on “where Grok gets it right or needs work.”
As soon as I read the announcement, I went to work. I fed a few radiological images I had on my phone to Grok and waited for magic to happen.
Ladies and gentlemen. The results were excellent!
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I went further to compare the results I obtained from Grok to the radiologist interpretation of the CT images, and they were basically the same thing.
Welcome to 21st century medicine.
Ever since Chat GPT became available to the public in 2022, I became hooked. I am in love with anything that makes my life easier. Kitchen gadgets – I love! Domestic cleaning equipment – count me in! AI – Definitely! All my correspondence, office work, research and even clinical work have been made significantly easier using AI. So, what’s not to love?
Today, our everyday lives depend entirely on mobile devices and the internet. We utilise a variety of apps, including Google maps, Alexa, Siri etc. I have forgotten the last time I asked anybody for direction; Google map is simply amazing.
Artificial intelligence (AI) provides numerous benefits, such as reducing human errors, time saving capabilities, digital assistance and unbiased decisions. An AI programme is capable of learning and thinking. It is possible to consider anything artificial intelligence if it consists of a programme performing a task we would generally assume a human would perform.
However, while artificial intelligence has many benefits, it also has drawbacks. The medical community has been in uproar since Musk’s announcement and have highlighted disadvantages of AI in medicine, including emotional intelligence, encouraging human laziness, and job displacement. Are doctors about to lose their jobs? What will happen to us? In this T-pain era? Chai!
But before we start losing sleep and tearing our hair over how AI and robots are coming to take over our jobs and lives, we need to understand the pros and cons of AI in medicine.
Let’s begin with the pros of AI.
One of the most significant benefits of Artificial Intelligence is that it can significantly reduce errors and increase accuracy and precision. The decisions taken by AI in every step are decided by information previously gathered and a certain set of algorithms. When programmed correctly, these errors can be reduced to null. A good example is the many silly mistakes we see in radiology reports – a woman who went in for an abdominal scan because of a suspected kidney infection is reported as having Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy. Since when did women have prostates? It is most likely a typographical error made by a tired doctor or receptionist. With AI, immediately the gender indicates that she is a woman, that mistake cannot be made.
Another key benefit of AI is round-the-clock availability. Many studies show that humans are productive for only about 3 to 4 hours daily. How many times have I sent a patient to collect test results, only to be told that the results were not ready yet? Twenty-four hours for a CT scan result? What if there is internal bleeding? Is the doctor supposed to wait forever for the results before entering the operating room and saving the patient’s life? Forty-eight hours for an X-ray result? Three days for a complete blood count result that can be gotten in 20 minutes? Haba! In this day and age?
Humans are not machines. We need breaks and time off to balance work and personal lives. But AI can work endlessly without breaks. They think much faster than humans and perform multiple tasks simultaneously with accurate results. They can even handle tedious, repetitive jobs easily with the help of AI algorithms.
But perhaps the most important advantage of AI is its contributions to medicine, with applications ranging from diagnosis and treatment, to drug discovery and clinical trials. AI-powered tools can help doctors and researchers analyse patient data, identify potential health risks and develop personalised treatment plans. This can lead to better patient health outcomes and help accelerate the development of new medical treatments and technologies. For example, AI has revolutionised cancer diagnosis and treatment. In one notable case, researchers at Google Health developed an AI model that outperformed radiologists in identifying breast cancer in mammograms. The AI system was able to reduce false positives and false negatives, leading to more accurate diagnoses. Additionally, AI can help create personalised treatment plans by analysing a patient’s genetic information, medical history and current health status.
You see what I mean? AI is wonderful!
Sorry, the editor is telling me that my word count is up. We will continue with the drawbacks next week.
NB: This article was not written by AI.
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