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I am not claiming that ChatGPT 3.5, which was the SOTA at the time of release and what he almost certainly used, is better than most doctors. I would say it's surprisingly good, about on par with a bright med student in say their third year, which is still plenty useful.
I have on the other hand, become well acquainted with GPT-4, which is where I make that case. Leaving aside my subjective impression, not only did it pass the USMLE, it did so with a 95th percentile score. That's not just a begrudging pass, it's stunning.
Given that the whole point of the USMLE is to comprehensively test the capabilities of a doctor, while also gating entry into residencies, I struggle to see how that isn't overwhelming evidence in its favor. If I sat the USMLE right now, even fresh as I am from an equivalent UK examination with an even lower pass rate, I couldn't do that, and if I could, it would represent at least half a year of constant studying. Since I and tens of thousands of others who aren't 95th percentile are allowed to practise as is..
Further, while GPT-4 has multimodal capabilities, being able to look at image files and understand them, such capabilities are not currently publicly available. I struggle to see how a radiologist would be making proper use of it, let alone when they almost certainly used the older and weaker 3.5, since half their job is looking for weird blobs in an image and translating them to a legible diagnosis or at least a list of findings.
Yes. It is different this time, and we have receipts to show it. Besides, I'm not the same people who were claiming that would be the case as early as two decades ago, if only because I was too busy memorizing multiplication tables.
At least your friend is smart enough to ask for regulation, if only for the wrong reasons. I'd do the same, but only because it's convenient for me, not because I actually think it's worse at the job.
Oh, yes. To be explicit, the souring is out of his fear of its capabilities (rather, what it's clearly tracking toward), not contempt at a lack of them. He's shifted to questions about HIPAA and big tech companies controlling data, importance of bedside manner (hilarious if you knew him), etc.
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