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As a fourth-year ophthalmology resident at Emory University School of Medicine, Riley Lyons’ biggest responsibilities include triage: When a patient comes in with an eye-related complaint, Lyons must make an immediate assessment of its urgency.
He often finds patients have already turned to “Dr. Google.” Online, Lyons said, they are likely to find that “any number of terrible things could be going on based on the symptoms that they’re experiencing.”
So, when two of Lyons’ fellow ophthalmologists at Emory came to him and suggested evaluating the accuracy of the AI chatbot ChatGPT in diagnosing eye-related complaints, he jumped at the chance.
In June, Lyons and his colleagues reported in medRxiv, an online publisher of health science preprints, that ChatGPT compared quite well to human doctors who reviewed the same symptoms — and performed vastly better than the symptom checker on the popular health website WebMD. And despite the much-publicized “hallucination” problem known to afflict ChatGPT — its habit of occasionally making outright false statements — the Emory study reported that the most recent version of ChatGPT made zero “grossly inaccurate” statements when presented with a standard set of eye complaints.
The relative proficiency of ChatGPT, which debuted in November 2022, was a surprise to Lyons and his co-authors. The artificial intelligence engine “is definitely an improvement over just putting something into a Google search bar and seeing what you find,” said co-author Nieraj Jain, an assistant professor at the Emory Eye Center who specializes in vitreoretinal surgery and disease.
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But the findings underscore a challenge facing the health care industry as it assesses the promise and pitfalls of generative AI, the type of artificial intelligence used by ChatGPT: The accuracy of chatbot-delivered medical information may represent an improvement over Dr. Google, but there are still many questions about how to integrate this new technology into health care systems with the same safeguards historically applied to the introduction of new drugs or medical devices.
The smooth syntax, authoritative tone, and dexterity of generative AI have drawn extraordinary attention from all sectors of society, with some comparing its future impact to that of the internet itself. In health care, companies are working feverishly to implement generative AI in areas such as radiology and medical records.
When it comes to consumer chatbots, though, there is still caution, even though the technology is already widely available — and better than many alternatives. Many doctors believe AI-based medical tools should undergo an approval process similar to the FDA’s regime for drugs, but that would be years away. It’s unclear how such a regime might apply to general-purpose AIs like ChatGPT.
“There’s no question we have issues with access to care, and whether or not it is a good idea to deploy ChatGPT to cover the holes or fill the gaps in access, it’s going to happen and it’s happening already,” said Jain. “People have already discovered its utility. So, we need to understand the potential advantages and the pitfalls.”
The Emory study is not alone in ratifying the relative accuracy of the new generation of AI chatbots. A report published in Nature in early July by a group led by Google computer scientists said answers generated by Med-PaLM, an AI chatbot the company built specifically for medical use, “compare favorably with answers given by clinicians.”
AI may also have better bedside manner. Another study, published in April by researchers from the University of California-San Diego and other institutions, even noted that health care professionals rated ChatGPT answers as more empathetic than responses from human doctors.
Indeed, a number of companies are exploring how chatbots could be used for mental health therapy, and some investors in the companies are betting that healthy people might also enjoy chatting and even bonding with an AI “friend.” The company behind Replika, one of the most advanced of that genre, markets its chatbot as, “The AI companion who cares. Always here to listen and talk. Always on your side.”
“We need physicians to start realizing that these new tools are here to stay and they’re offering new capabilities both to physicians and patients,” said James Benoit, an AI consultant. While a postdoctoral fellow in nursing at the University of Alberta in Canada, he published a study in February reporting that ChatGPT significantly outperformed online symptom checkers in evaluating a set of medical scenarios. “They are accurate enough at this point to start meriting some consideration,” he said.
Still, even the researchers who have demonstrated ChatGPT’s relative reliability are cautious about recommending that patients put their full trust in the current state of AI. For many medical professionals, AI chatbots are an invitation to trouble: They cite a host of issues relating to privacy, safety, bias, liability, transparency, and the current absence of regulatory oversight.
The proposition that AI should be embraced because it represents a marginal improvement over Dr. Google is unconvincing, these critics say.
“That’s a little bit of a disappointing bar to set, isn’t it?” said Mason Marks, a professor and MD who specializes in health law at Florida State University. He recently wrote an opinion piece on AI chatbots and privacy in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “I don’t know how helpful it is to say, ‘Well, let’s just throw this conversational AI on as a band-aid to make up for these deeper systemic issues,’” he said to KFF Health News.
The biggest danger, in his view, is the likelihood that market incentives will result in AI interfaces designed to steer patients to particular drugs or medical services. “Companies might want to push a particular product over another,” said Marks. “The potential for exploitation of people and the commercialization of data is unprecedented.”
OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, also urged caution.
“OpenAI’s models are not fine-tuned to provide medical information,” a company spokesperson said. “You should never use our models to provide diagnostic or treatment services for serious medical conditions.”
John Ayers, a computational epidemiologist who was the lead author of the UCSD study, said that as with other medical interventions, the focus should be on patient outcomes.
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“If regulators came out and said that if you want to provide patient services using a chatbot, you have to demonstrate that chatbots improve patient outcomes, then randomized controlled trials would be registered tomorrow for a host of outcomes,” Ayers said.
He would like to see a more urgent stance from regulators.
“One hundred million people have ChatGPT on their phone,” said Ayers, “and are asking questions right now. People are going to use chatbots with or without us.”
At present, though, there are few signs that rigorous testing of AIs for safety and effectiveness is imminent. In May, Robert Califf, the commissioner of the FDA, described “the regulation of large language models as critical to our future,” but aside from recommending that regulators be “nimble” in their approach, he offered few details.
In the meantime, the race is on. In July, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Mayo Clinic was partnering with Google to integrate the Med-PaLM 2 chatbot into its system. In June, WebMD announced it was partnering with a Pasadena, California-based startup, HIA Technologies Inc., to provide interactive “digital health assistants.” And the ongoing integration of AI into both Microsoft’s Bing and Google Search suggests that Dr. Google is already well on its way to being replaced by Dr. Chatbot.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Andrew Leonard
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J M Smucker (SJM) has agreed to buy Hostess Brands, the popular manufacture of Twinkies and other popular snack foods. The giant jam, jelly, peanut butter and other food products manufacturer will buy Hostess Brands for $5.6 billion that includes cash, shares in Smucker and debt. The Monday announcement sent Hostess shares soaring by 19 percent while Smucker shares fell by 7.5 percent.
Each share of Hostess will receive $30 in cash and 0.03002 share of Smucker’s stock. The giant jam and peanut butter maker will also take over Hostess’s debt which is approximately $900 million.
Smucker is expecting to close the deal in its fiscal third quarter that ends in January. The Ohio based company had also expanded its operations into pet foods and then sold its pet brands to Post Holdings. It has paid a high price for Hostess Brands and is expecting to benefit from synergies of roughly $100 million in the next two years.
Kansas based Hostess Brands has seen a surge in share price after it was looking for a sale and food giants such as PepsiCo as well as Mondelez International, the manufacturer of Oreo showed interest in the maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and other brands.
There have been a few big deals this year and giant food companies have acquired other food companies for a spurt in growth. Food companies that did extremely well during the pandemic are seeing a slowdown and hope that their acquisitions will increase their value and growth.
We had recently reported that Campbell Soups announced that it would be acquiring Sovos Brands that manufactures popular Mr. Rao sauces for $2.7 billion. Earlier in July, Mars the owner of M&M’s and other popular brands acquired Kevin’s Natural Foods. In June, Unilever, one of the largest global food brands acquired frozen yogurt maker Yasso. In September, Smucker is the newest food giant to announce its plan to acquire Hostess Brands.
Smucker has deep pockets as well as marketing expertise. It can use these advantages to increase the reach of Hostess Brands, while expanding its own brands. Hostess brands have mass appeal and wide reach across consumers as it sells its popular products in snack sizes as well and this could also help Smucker expand its market reach.
Live view of the eruption in Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii from the northwest rim of the caldera, looking east. Ninety-nine percent of the gas molecules emitted during a volcanic eruption are water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The remaining one percent is comprised of small amounts of hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, and other minor gas species.
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Strong seismic activity and a “rapid uplift” of the peak, according to USGS, preceded the eruption.As it assesses the eruption, the government changed the volcano alert from watch to warning and increased Kilauea’s aviation color code from orange to red.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported on Sunday that the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island started to erupt on Sunday afternoon, with flows now restricted to the adjacent crater floor.
Numerous earthquakes and a significant eruption at Kilauea in 2019 caused the destruction of hundreds of houses and businesses. This year’s eruptions of the volcano occurred in January and June.
Fissures near the volcano’s crater’s base are producing lava flows on the crater floor, according to webcam images.
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Oracle, the market leader in artificial intelligence, reported weaker-than-expected earnings for the second quarter, sending the stock market tumbling on Tuesday. The ceremony to introduce the iPhone 15 from Apple will begin later today. The Consumer Price Index for August is an important piece of inflation statistics, and it will be the focus of Wall Street on Wednesday. While the dollar strengthened, stock prices fell as investors braced themselves for crucial inflation data that was widely anticipated to shed light on the Federal Reserve’s likely future moves. Oracle Corp.’s 11% drop after slowing cloud sales led the S&P 500’s declines and was the largest one day drop since 2020.
Inflation and falling consumer spending drained the coffers of Noble House Home Furnishings LLC, thus the company filed for bankruptcy with the intention of liquidating its assets. Assets and liabilities of at least $100 million were cited in the bankruptcy petition for the company, which lists Amazon.com Inc., Wayfair Inc., and Target Corp. as customers.
According to a blog post published on Tuesday, TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance has finally launched the social media app’s e-commerce business in the United States after months of testing.
Late last week, QSR Web claimed, citing an email from a corporate spokesman, that McDonald’s will be eliminating the self-serve beverage stations from the dining areas of its restaurants in the United States. Customers will have plenty of time to adjust, as the shift is not expected to take place until 2032.
BMW drivers in nations like the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Germany have been charged $18 USD per month to activate the car’s heated seats and steering wheel. As a result of public outcry, the seat-warming submarine was retired after only one cold season.
Tesla’s stock price increased by 10% yesterday when Morgan Stanley predicted that the company’s Dojo supercomputer would bring in an additional $500 billion for the electric vehicle industry. Tesla launched Dojo in July to train the AI models used by autonomous vehicles.
After launching Llama 2 in July, Meta is rumoured to be working on a third major language model (the engine that underpins AI). Reportedly as potent as OpenAI’s GPT-4, its main competitor, and available for no cost to users.
Although the U.S. economy is performing well, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says it would be a “huge mistake” to expect that it will persist for years given the threats that exist. He concedes that consumers are resilient, but that their spending power is insufficient to sustain economic growth.
Over-the-counter cold medicines including some varieties of Procter & Gamble Co.’s Nyquil contain phenylephrine, which a panel of US regulatory experts found doesn’t actually work. Scientific evidence does not indicate that the nasal decongestant is beneficial when taken orally at prescribed doses, as decided on Tuesday by a panel of 16 FDA experts.
As Instacart tries to launch an initial public stock offering in a tough climate for online delivery, the company’s valuation has dropped by tens of billions of dollars from where it was a year ago.
On Tuesday, Target said that it had reached an agreement with jeweller Kendra Scott to sell Target-exclusive collections of earrings, bracelets, and other accessories in preparation for the crucial Christmas season.
By pledging to buy 250,000 tons of removal credits over a 10-year period, the online retail giant Amazon.com (AMZN) is making its first investment in direct air capture technology, which removes emissions from the environment.
The national airline of Japan has begun a year-long test of a service that lets guests pre-order a wardrobe (spanning many seasons and fashion eras) and have it delivered to their hotel. Clothes are returned at the end of each stay to be washed and reused in the system.
Inflation numbers for the core on Wednesday. Cracker Barrel and Semtech have projected earnings.
Initial Jobless Claims are due on Thursday. The agreement with the United Auto Workers is about to end. Adobe and Lennar are anticipated to report earnings.
Nineteen-year-old American Ashlyn Krueger, ranked No. 123 in the world, upset eighth-seeded Kateryna Baindl of Ukraine 6-2, 6-3 in the opening round of the Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships on Monday in Osaka.
Krueger won 27 of her 38 first-service points and cleaned up 9 of her 15 second-service points. She won the final four games of the first set and the final three games of the second to pull away in a tidy 82 minutes.
No. 5 seed Nadia Podoroska of Argentina needed three sets to get by China’s Yue Yuan 6-4, 3-6, 7-5. No. 6 seed Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan was a 6-2, 6-3 winner over Diana Shnaider of Russia, saving six of seven break points along the way.
Two matches were in the third set when they were suspended until Tuesday. No. 4 seed Linda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic and Great Britain’s Harriet Dart were tied a set apiece, 7-5, 5-7. Japan’s Mai Hontama led South Korea’s Su Jeong Jang 7-5, 0-6, 5-1.
San Diego Open
Katie Volynets rallied past 17-year-old qualifier Clervie Ngounoue 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 in an all-U.S. matchup during the first round at San Diego.
Ngounoue, ranked 224th in the world, was playing in just her second match in a top-level WTA Tour event. She recently lost to Australia’s Daria Saville in the first round of the U.S. Open.
Volynets, 21, had lost her past eight top-level WTA Tour matches since reaching the semifinals at Austin, Texas, in March.
In other opening-round action, Belarus’ Aliaksandra Sasnovich upset fifth-seeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland 6-3, 3-6, 6-2. Russia’s Anastasia Potapova, the United States’ Emma Navarro and Colombia’s Camila Osorio also won first-round matches.
Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina survived the last match of the night, topping the Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova 7-6 (4), 0-6, 6-3.
Team Secret moved into first place in Group A by beating TSM 2-0 during group stage action at BetBoom Dacha on Monday in Yerevan, Armenia.
Secret outlasted TSM in 68 minutes on green before finishing them off in 41 minutes on red. Pakistani-American Sumail “SumaiL” Hassan tallied 33 kills, just three deaths and 32 assists across the two maps to lead Secret.
BetBoom Team and Evil Geniuses tied 1-1 in the other Group A match of the day. Meanwhile, Gaimin Gladiators improved to 2-0-0 to lead Group B, beating beastcoast, and 9Pandas defeated Nigma Galaxy.
Two round-robin groups of four teams apiece will stage best-of-two matches over three days to set the playoff bracket, which begins Wednesday.
The top two teams from each group will be seeded into the upper bracket, while the third-place team in each group will be slotted into the lower bracket. The playoffs will be best-of-three, double-elimination, with a best-of-five grand final.
The winning team will receive $150,000 as part of an overall $250,000 prize pool.
On Monday, Evil Geniuses scored a 30-minute win on red to open their match, but BetBoom answered with a 47-minute win on green.
Gaimin Gladiators defeated beastcoast in 39 minutes on green and 37 minutes on red.
9Pandas, meanwhile, earned wins in 56 minutes and 47 minutes, playing on red both times, to hand Nigma Galaxy its second loss in two days.
Group A standings:
1. Team Secret 1-1-0 (3-1)
2. TSM 1-0-1 (2-2)
3. BetBoom Team 0-2-0 (2-2)
4. Evil Geniuses 0-1-1 (1-3)
Celebrity singer Billie Eilish posted a carousel of new as well as old photos on social media and web fans went wild with comments. Fresh from the success of her single in the Barbie movie, the young singer also showed how toned she was in a photo that showed her wearing fishnet stockings. The new dump on social media showed both old as well as new photos so web fans could see the difference.
Billie Eilish shared eight photos with the caption “Old & new” and the first pic showed how strong Billie Eilish’s legs really are! She wore fishnet stockings that were layered under camo briefs. She added a pair of sneaker heels to complete the toned look.
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Each photo was unique, and one showed her clutching onto a pink bag wearing three thick metal rings on her fingers and the last one in the photo dump showed her brushing her teeth. Web fans filled the post with comments. Unsurprisingly it was the first photo that got the most comments.
The What Was I Made For singer has said that she became fond of the gym after she sprained her ankle when she was performing in Milan. She has described herself as a “gym rat” and said that she began working out as she didn’t want to get injured again.
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The 21-year-old celebrity singer had mentioned the importance of working out for her and also said that it made her feel better. She praised the effects of regular activity in the gym and said that it had become a large part of her life and helped her move well on the stage.
Billie Eilish has said that she grew up vegetarian and that she became vegan for seven years.
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Nineteen-year-old American Ashlyn Krueger, ranked No. 123 in the world, upset eighth-seeded Kateryna Baindl of Ukraine 6-2, 6-3 in the opening round of the Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships on Monday in Osaka.
Krueger won 27 of her 38 first-service points and cleaned up 9 of her 15 second-service points. She won the final four games of the first set and the final three games of the second to pull away in a tidy 82 minutes.
No. 5 seed Nadia Podoroska of Argentina needed three sets to get by China’s Yue Yuan 6-4, 3-6, 7-5. No. 6 seed Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan was a 6-2, 6-3 winner over Diana Shnaider of Russia, saving six of seven break points along the way.
Two matches were in the third set when they were suspended until Tuesday. No. 4 seed Linda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic and Great Britain’s Harriet Dart were tied a set apiece, 7-5, 5-7. Japan’s Mai Hontama led South Korea’s Su Jeong Jang 7-5, 0-6, 5-1.
