At the recent ACVIM Forum in Philadelphia, a radiologist gave a very enlightening presentation about AI, and specifically ChatGPT. Have any of you messed around with this technology yet? Is anyone using it for work flow support? Although this TidBit Tuesday isn’t specifically about a neurology topic, I was so blow away by the ChatGPT lecture I decided to include it as a TidBit Tuesday. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled neurology topics next week… 😊
To get us all on the same page, ChatGPT is a new artificial intelligence (AI) software developed by Microsoft engineers. The presenter at ACVIM (Dr. Eli Cohen, provided an example during his talk of a “conversation” he had with ChatGPT that terrified me. While reviewing a radiograph ChatGPT suggested that one of the differentials for this pet with clear lytic bone lesions on each side of an intervertebral disc space could be “sterile discospondylitis”. Dr. Cohen, like all of us in the audience, instantly worried that we had missed this diagnosis in our years of practice experience. STERILE disco? Is this real? How could I have missed this?? So, he asked ChatGPT to provide references for this statement. AND IT DID. Dozens of references popped up on the screen. They were from reputable journals like JAVMA, JVIM, and Vet Rad and Ultrasound. By real, live people, practicing veterinary neurologists and radiologists. Some of us were in the audience. The catch? None of these references were real. NOT ONE of the references was actually a reference for this imaginary disease. ChatGPT had taken names of people that may have written about “sterile” and “discospondylitis” separately and combined this into believable reference points. My take away from this was to make sure if and when I use ChatGPT for any work-related item, that I personally double check (dare I say vet?) all of the data points. Here is a perfect example. I fed ChatGPT the following question:
What is the neuroanatomic lesion localization for a dog with seizures?
Here is the answer:
Seizures in dogs can arise from various neuroanatomic locations. The specific neuroanatomic lesion localization for seizures depends on the underlying cause and can vary between individual cases. Here are a few examples of potential lesion locations associated with seizures in dogs…
WRONG. What is the correct neuroanatomic lesion localization for a dog with seizures? That’s right, forebrain or prosencephalon. There is only one neuroanatomic lesion localization for pets with seizures. The etiology varies widely from hypoglycemia to brain tumors, but all seizures come from one part.
This was a wonderful reminder to me how important the grasp of words, terms and phrases is when we communicate in veterinary medicine. I, probably similar to you, will be using AI in my veterinary career in the future. I think it is probably inevitable. However, we must remember to double check what we put in is using the correct terminology, and that the produced answer is in line with our knowledge and understanding.
I’d love to hear if you use AI in your personal or professional life and how it has affected you. I hope you had a safe and happy 1st or 4th of July and I look forward to seeing you, without robots, in the future!