Google’s medical AI chatbot is already being tested in hospitals

Google’s Med-PALM 2, an AI tool designed to answer questions about medical information, is being tested at the Mayo Clinic research hospital since April. wall street journal Reported this morning. Med-PaLM 2 is a variant of PaLM 2, which was announced at Google I/O in May this year. PaLM 2 is the language model underpinning Google’s Bard.

It is also mentioned in the paper Research Google made public in May (PDF) shows that MED-PALM 2 still suffers from some of the accuracy problems we’re already used to seeing in larger language models. In the study, physicians found more inaccuracies and irrelevant information in answers provided by Google’s Med-PaLM and Med-PaLM 2 than other doctors.

Yet, in nearly every other metric, such as showing evidence of reasoning, showing consensus-supported answers, or showing no signs of misunderstanding, MED-PALM 2 performed more or less the same as real doctors.

WSJ The report states that customers testing MED-PALM 2 will control their data, which will be encrypted and Google will not have access to it.

According to Google Senior Research Director Greg Corrado, WSJ Says, MED-PALM 2 is still in the early stages. Corrado said that although he would not want it to be part of his own family’s “health care journey”, he believes that Med-PALM 2 “takes the place in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and gives them Expands up to 10 times.”

We’ve reached out to Google and the Mayo Clinic for more information.