alt Hacker NewsNew AI Is More Than Twice as Good at Diagnosing Diseases as Doctors
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Way back in 1979, the MYCIN system was shown to be better at diagnosing than Doctors:
>...Eight independent evaluators with special expertise in the management of meningitis compared MYCIN's choice of antimicrobials with the choices of nine human prescribers for ten test cases of meningitis. MYCIN received an acceptability rating of 65% by the evaluators; the corresponding ratings for acceptability of the regimen prescribed by the five faculty specialists ranged from 42.5% to 62.5%. The system never failed to cover a treatable pathogen while demonstrating efficiency in minimizing the number of antimicrobials prescribed.
> The system achieved its strongest results using OpenAI’s GPT-5, with additional testing showing improvements using GPT-5.5.
If it's basically dumping details into ChatGPT, I'd wonder why the hospital would bother paying Microsoft. They can ask it to simulate a panel of physicians too.
Title is: Microsoft Says AI Is More Than Twice as Good at Diagnosing Diseases as Doctors
As a healthcare provider (albeit paramedic), I don't think the issue is AI's encyclopedic knowledge of disease, but rather, how to draw out a good, structured patient interview and exam, and cross-reference details. I could regale you with patients who only remembered their serious penicillin allergy when we got to the hospital, or forget their shoulder pain when describing chest pressure and so on and so on and so on.
However, this is something an AI can be good at. And well, GIGO, be your provider human or AI. I can't act on things you don't tell me. Well, somewhat - if I'm looking at your lower legs and seeing severe edema, I might be skeptical of your claim that "other than what's going on today, perfectly healthy". So maybe we need realtime video too.
Relatedly, I was talking to my immigration attorney, who has been very good, on an area where immigration law intersects some other topics, and she was fairly obviously using AI on our video call to guide her on many areas she wasn't as familiar with.
People gotta get over it. Just like we had to accept AI can code better than us, we have to accept that AI will just be far better at dispensing medical advice and enabling us to truly divulge all our medical history without being dismissed or judged by a doctor who sees so many patients they can’t possible care deeply about each and every single one.
Often doctors miss rare diseases and gaslight patients that they don't have them.
AI is great for this since it has encyclopedic knowledge.
Medical doctors are probably of the easiest profession to be replaced with Ai when the time comes but not in all fields yet. General practice is probably easy to replace with Ai; next is oncologists and any narrow field of specialty that requires simple examination and a lot of testing. Doctors have done everything possible to avoid touching and examining patients closely in recent times and the field is Ai ready. Some blood and urine test, Xrays and MRI and voila... diagnosis.
For rural docs without access to specialists or older docs who need to stay up to date this is great. It is 100% terrible for med students, residents, fellows, and young attendings ALL of whom need the practice and experience of unassisted diagnosis and treatment on the cases they see most commonly. It’s no surprise that it’s “better” for complex cases, but it’s most likely on par with a PCP or FP or Pedi doc or specialist seeing common issues they see everyday in their own practices. No doc will refuse a new toy, so I’m worried that this will lead to a deterioration of clinical expertise in the US. Any other docs have an opinion?