{"id":346598,"date":"2026-02-10T10:32:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/346598\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:32:23","slug":"ai-chatbots-give-bad-health-advice-research-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/346598\/","title":{"rendered":"AI chatbots give bad health advice, research finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n          <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/AFP048484_00.pre.jpg\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t      Next time you&#8217;re considering consulting Dr ChatGPT, perhaps think again.<br \/>  Despite now being able to ace most medical licensing exams, artificial intelligence chatbots do not give humans better health advice than they can find using more traditional methods, according to a study published on Monday.<br \/>  Despite all the hype, AI just isn&#8217;t ready to take on the role of the physician, study co-author Rebecca Payne from Oxford University said.<br \/>  Patients need to be aware that asking a large language model about their symptoms can be dangerous, giving wrong diagnoses and failing to recognise when urgent help is needed, she added in a statement.<br \/>  The British-led team of researchers wanted to find out how successful humans are when they use chatbots to identify their health problems and whether they require seeing a doctor or going to hospital.<br \/>  The team presented nearly 1,300 UK-based participants with 10 different scenarios, such as a headache after a night out drinking, a new mother feeling exhausted or what having gallstones feels like.<br \/>  Then the researchers randomly assigned the participants one of three chatbots: OpenAI&#8217;s GPT-4o, Meta&#8217;s Llama 3 or Command R+. There was also a control group that used internet search engines.<br \/>  People using the AI chatbots were only able to identify their health problem around a third of the time, while only around 45 percent figured out the right course of action.<br \/>  This was no better than the control group, according to the study, published in the Nature Medicine journal.<br \/>  &#8211; Communication breakdown &#8211;<br \/>  The researchers pointed out the disparity between these disappointing results and how AI chatbots score extremely highly on medical benchmarks and exams, blaming the gap on a communication breakdown.<br \/>  Unlike the simulated patient interactions often used to test AI, the real humans often did not give the chatbots all the relevant information.<br \/>  And sometimes the humans struggled to interpret the options offered by the chatbot, or misunderstood or simply ignored its advice.<br \/>  One out of every six US adults ask AI chatbots about health information at least once a month, the researchers said, with that number expected to increase as more people adopt the new technology.<br \/>  This is a very important study as it highlights the real medical risks posed to the public by chatbots, David Shaw, a bioethicist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who was not involved in the research, told AFP.<br \/>  He advised people to only trust medical information from reliable sources, such as the UK&#8217;s National Health Service.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Next time you&#8217;re considering consulting Dr ChatGPT, perhaps think again. Despite now being able to ace m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6004,158940,156877,158948,158943,9737,13931,66322,156614,96840,1606,30863,66790,80895,158945,400,83094,9924,88156,2700,158944,5623,158949,3326,158941,31058,80723,158947,16764,17552,8773,23809,130770,158939,27056,158946,158942,23650,17554,45801],"class_list":{"0":"post-346598","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-jiji","10":"tag-kenko","11":"tag-topics","12":"tag-topix","13":"tag-9737","14":"tag-13931","15":"tag-66322","16":"tag-156614","17":"tag-96840","18":"tag-1606","19":"tag-30863","20":"tag-66790","21":"tag-80895","22":"tag-158945","23":"tag-400","24":"tag-83094","25":"tag-9924","26":"tag-88156","27":"tag-2700","28":"tag-158944","29":"tag-5623","30":"tag-158949","31":"tag-3326","32":"tag-158941","33":"tag-31058","34":"tag-80723","35":"tag-158947","36":"tag-16764","37":"tag-17552","38":"tag-8773","39":"tag-23809","40":"tag-130770","41":"tag-158939","42":"tag-27056","43":"tag-158946","44":"tag-158942","45":"tag-23650","46":"tag-17554","47":"tag-45801"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/wakoka.com\/@life\/116045882659930601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wacoca.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}