Recently, in May, Google premiered in the United States a new function called AI Overviews, which operates with artificial intelligence Generative (AI).
This tool collects information collected from all over the Internet and delivers answers to questions posed by users.
Although it is presented as a promising proposal, in its first weeks of operation Different types of errors and inaccuracies have been reported in the data that shares.
That It has also been seen in queries related to the field of healthwhich could put patients at risk if they follow inaccurate or outright false information.
For example, from the New York Times They did a test and asked the system: “How many stones should I eat?”.
Faced with this query, The answer was that people should eat at least one a dayin order to obtain vitamins and minerals.
As is known, The above is false and can have serious consequences in the organism.
The AI in question took such words from a satirical page and which, as one might imagine, had no medical credibility.
This is why the director of Artificial Intelligence at UC San Diego Health, Kaandeep Singh, told the aforementioned media that “You shouldn’t trust everything you read”.
On the other hand, Google’s senior product manager, Hema Budaraju, told the Times that have taken measures so that health-related searches have “additional protective barriers”.
However, did not describe them in more detailthey stated from the American newspaper.
Although the answers specify some well-known sources in this area—such as the Mayo Clinic, WebMD, the WHO, and PubMed—, The summary provided by the AI can also use sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, blogs or even commercial sites.
This without detailing what specific data comes from what sources.
An experiment they did from the Times was consult the following: “Is it healthy to eat chocolate?”.
Although the response contained some truthful information, it also incorporated a text from a company dedicated to selling these products.
Likewise, when they asked the question another way—”Is chocolate healthy for you?”— came across claims appearing on a site selling “home gut intelligence tests” and an app of nutrition.
What awakens antibodies against this function with AI is that a block of text is presented that combines data from several sources, which could confuse and make it more difficult to assess veracity of these quickly.
Specialists in the field of health explained that to this is added that does not distinguish between strong scientific evidence and weaker study resultsin addition to not including the necessary warnings for each case, as appropriate.
In addition, There are still doubts about whether it includes the most recent advances (and which have been validated by the scientific community) or whether it continues to show results that have already been refuted..
For the director of the Stanford Health Communication Initiative, Seema Yasmin, That point is key, since “science is not a bunch of static facts.”.
A Google spokesperson told the Times that The summaries that AI Overviews will provide will match the information provided by the first search results..
Along with it, emphasized that its goal is to help users get an idea, but that the system is not designed to replace the content delivered by specialized sites.
Along these lines, a representative of the Cleveland Clinic stressed that to investigate health information on the Internet you have to “search directly from known and trusted sources”.
It is worth remembering that It is always advisable to see a medical professional if you have questions about your health or have symptoms of a possible condition..
