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Analysis and Technology

Is AI finally ready to replace your doctor?

Advances in artificial intelligence mean that machines can now perform certain diagnostic tasks with far better accuracy than human doctors - but the picture is more complicated than you might think

By Chris Stokel-Walker

19 December 2024

Are we ready for a dose of digital medicine?

Jackie Niam/iStock/Getty Images

One of OpenAI’s leading artificial intelligence models can outperform humans at diagnosing medical conditions, but does that mean AI is ready to replace human doctors? Not quite, although such technology could increasingly play a role in medical treatment.

Adam Rodman at Harvard Medical School and his colleagues at universities, hospitals and companies across the US have put o1-preview, an AI model released by OpenAI in September, through a battery of tests designed to assess its performance on a range of medical tasks. These were adapted from…

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