Former pastor claims he almost died from ChatGPT’s inaccurate medical advice

This may be evolution's survival of the fittest taking place. The fact that this guy felt that this was the right path to receiving medical advice to a serious condition is beyond me.

While in general I would agree that using AI to advise treatment over getting that advice from a doctor is pretty stupid, I’ll point out that many more people have died following a doctor’s advice than advice from AI. Doctors are hardly all-knowing, and they make mistakes. Of course, they probably make less mistakes than AI at this point.

Personally, I think it’s only a matter of time before AI’s ability to diagnose from symptoms will be in most cases superior to that of any human. That speaks to AI’s strengths (i.e. collating and evaluating data, while considering thousands more sources than any doctor will have read). However, as AI is still very poor at judgment or discernment, and I don’t foresee that really changing, I would still want human doctors to go over any AI diagnosis results when discussing treatment options, even if AI is ever considered the primary tool used by doctors for diagnosis.

....several months of "conversations" with AI, and he never once thought "hey, maybe I ought to give the nurse line a call and see what they think?" Yes, I'm with Mr. Szweda on the Darwinian implications here to a degree. I am reminded of the time I had a slight strain in my left pectoral after a kid in my church's youth group wrestled me (he lost FWIW), and the nurse put me through full heart attack triage. Well done, nurse! I'm pretty sure that if he'd called his doctors' office, he'd have undergone the same, and they'd have recommended he get a ride to the hospital, if not even a ride with blinking lights. My RN daughters note that they put people through heart attack triage routinely--it's like a reflex action.

A couple of other questions come to mind here. First, if he's trusting AI for his medical care, are the churches who employed him totally skimping on his health insurance? Second, if he's trusting AI for his medical care, I have to wonder how much of his sermons were "less than original" as well.