{"id":7084,"date":"2024-05-31T09:04:45","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T09:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=7084"},"modified":"2024-05-31T09:25:28","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T09:25:28","slug":"google-is-using-a-i-to-answer-your-health-questions-should-you-trust-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=7084","title":{"rendered":"Google Is Using A.I. to Answer Your Health Questions. Should You Trust It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts say the new feature may offer dubious advice in response to personal health queries.<\/p>\n

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Do you have a headache or is it a sinus infection? What does a stress fracture feel like? Should you be worried about the pain in your chest? If you Google those questions now, the answers may be written by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

This month, Google rolled out a new feature called A.I. Overviews<\/a> that uses generative A.I., a type of machine-learning technology that is trained on information from across the internet and produces conversational answers to some search questions in a matter of seconds.<\/p>\n

In the weeks since the tool launched, users have encountered a wide array of inaccuracies and odd answers on a range of subjects. But when it comes to how it answers health questions, experts said the stakes were particularly high. The technology could point people toward healthier habits or needed medical care, but it also has the potential to give inaccurate information. The A.I. can sometimes fabricate facts. And if its answers are shaped by websites that aren\u2019t grounded in science, it might offer advice that goes against medical guidance or poses a risk to a person\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

The system has already been shown to produce bad answers<\/a> seemingly based on flawed sources. When asked \u201chow many rocks should I eat,\u201d for example, A.I. Overviews told some users to eat at least one rock a day for vitamins and minerals. (The advice was scraped from The Onion<\/a>, a satirical site.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou can\u2019t trust everything you read,\u201d said Dr. Karandeep Singh, chief health A.I. officer at UC San Diego Health. In health, he said, the source of your information is essential. <\/p>\n

Hema Budaraju, a Google senior director of product management who helps to lead work on A.I. Overview, said that health searches had \u201cadditional guardrails,\u201d but declined to describe those in detail. Searches that are deemed dangerous or explicit, or that indicate that someone is in a vulnerable situation, such as with self-harm, do not trigger A.I. summaries, she said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Take the question \u201cIs chocolate healthy?\u201d Google\u2019s answer pulls up information from research on heart health, mental health and more.<\/p>\n

An A.I. generated search results page lists health benefits, including inflammation and heart health, of eating chocolate.<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Answers to health questions like this often draw from reputable sources.<\/p>\n

Three search result boxes show articles published in sources like Johns Hopkins Medicine and Medical News Today.<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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However, in this case, the response also cites Venchi, an Italian chocolate and gelato company.<\/p>\n

One search result shows an article titled \u201cIs Dark Chocolate Good For Weight Loss?\u201d<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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A similar search \u2014 \u201cIs chocolate healthy for you?\u201d \u2014 generated an answer from sources including the website of a company called ZOE, which sells at-home \u201cgut intelligence tests\u201d and a nutritional app.<\/p>\n

A Google search results box displays an article about chocolate.<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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Experts say the new feature may offer dubious advice in response to personal health queries.Do you have a headache or is it a sinus infection? What does a stress fracture feel like? Should you be worried about the pain in your chest? If you Google those questions now, the answers may be written by artificial intelligence.This month, Google rolled out a new feature called A.I. Overviews that uses generative A.I., a type of machine-learning technology that is trained on information from across the internet and produces conversational answers to some search questions in a matter of seconds.In the weeks since the tool launched, users have encountered a wide array of inaccuracies and odd answers on a range of subjects. But when it comes to how it answers health questions, experts said the stakes were particularly high. The technology could point people toward healthier habits or needed medical care, but it also has the potential to give inaccurate information. The A.I. can sometimes fabricate facts. And if its answers are shaped by websites that aren\u2019t grounded in science, it might offer advice that goes against medical guidance or poses a risk to a person\u2019s health.The system has already been shown to produce bad answers seemingly based on flawed sources. When asked \u201chow many rocks should I eat,\u201d for example, A.I. Overviews told some users to eat at least one rock a day for vitamins and minerals. (The advice was scraped from The Onion, a satirical site.)\u201cYou can\u2019t trust everything you read,\u201d said Dr. Karandeep Singh, chief health A.I. officer at UC San Diego Health. In health, he said, the source of your information is essential. Hema Budaraju, a Google senior director of product management who helps to lead work on A.I. Overview, said that health searches had \u201cadditional guardrails,\u201d but declined to describe those in detail. Searches that are deemed dangerous or explicit, or that indicate that someone is in a vulnerable situation, such as with self-harm, do not trigger A.I. summaries, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7086,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7087,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7084\/revisions\/7087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}