People struggle to get useful health advice from chatbots, study finds

With long waiting lists and rising costs in overburdened healthcare systems, many people are turning to AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT for medical self-diagnosis. About 1 in 6 American adults already use chatbots for health advice at least monthly, according to one recent survey. But placing too much trust in chatbots’ outputs can be risky, in part because people struggle to know what information to give chatbots for the best possible health recommendations, according to a recent Oxford-led study. “The study revealed a two-way communication breakdown,” Adam Mahdi, director of graduate studies at the Oxford Internet Institute and a co-author of the study, told TechCrunch. “Those using [chatbots] didn’t make better decisions than participants who relied on traditional methods like online searches or their own judgment.” For the study, the authors recruited around 1,300 people in the U.K. and gave them medical scenarios written by a group of doctors. The participants were tasked with ... Read full article.