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Experts say the new feature may simply offer questionable recommendations in response to private fitness questions.
By Talya Minsberg
Do you have a headache or is it a sinus infection?What Does a Stress Fracture Look Like? Should I Be Concerned About Chest Pain?If you Google those questions now, it’s possible that the answers are typed using synthetic intelligence.
This month, Google launched a new feature called A. I. Insights that uses generative AI, a type of device-based learning generation that is trained on data from and produces conversational responses to certain study questions in seconds.
In the weeks since the tool’s launch, users have been confronted with a wide variety of inaccuracies and mixed answers on various topics. But when it comes to answering fitness questions, experts believe the stakes are high. Technology can also guide other people toward healthier behavior or mandatory medical care, but it also threatens to provide misinformation. AI can rarely fabricate facts. And if their answers are shaped through science-based websites, they may be offering recommendations that go against medical advice or pose a threat to a person’s health.
The formula has already been shown to produce answers that appear to be based on erroneous sources. When asked “how many stones do you deserve to eat,” for example, A. I. The Insights told some users to eat at least one stone a day for nutrients. and minerals. (The advice was taken from The Onion, a satirical site. )
“You can’t accept everything you read as true,” said Dr. Karandeep Singh, head of AI in health at UC San Diego Health. In health, he says, the source of the data is critical.
Hema Budaraju, Google’s senior director of product control who is helping lead the AI work. In short, he said the medical studies had “additional protections,” but declined to describe them in detail. Searches that are considered harmful or explicit, or that imply that a user is in a vulnerable situation, such as self-harm, do cause AI. The summaries, he says.
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