Google's Med-PaLM 2: A New AI Chatbot for Medical Information

 

Google is testing a new AI chatbot called Med-PaLM 2 that is designed to answer questions about medical information. The chatbot has been in testing at the Mayo Clinic research hospital since April, and Google believes that it could be particularly helpful in countries with limited access to doctors.

Med-PaLM 2 is a variant of PaLM 2, which was announced at Google I/O in May. PaLM 2 is a large language model (LLM) that has been trained on a massive dataset of text and code. Med-PaLM 2 has been trained on a curated set of medical expert demonstrations, which Google believes will make it better at healthcare conversations than generalized chatbots.

In a study published in May, Google researchers found that Med-PaLM 2 still suffers from some of the accuracy issues that we're already used to seeing in LLMs. For example, physicians found more inaccuracies and irrelevant information in answers provided by Med-PaLM 2 than those of other doctors.

However, Med-PaLM 2 performed more or less as well as the actual doctors in almost every other metric, such as showing evidence of reasoning, consensus-supported answers, or showing no sign of incorrect comprehension.

Google says that customers testing Med-PaLM 2 will control their data, which will be encrypted, and Google won't have access to it.

Google senior research director Greg Corrado said that Med-PaLM 2 is still in its early stages, but he believes that it has the potential to "take the places in healthcare where AI can be beneficial and expand them by 10-fold."

What does this mean for the future of healthcare?

The development of Med-PaLM 2 is a sign of the growing potential of AI in healthcare. As LLMs continue to improve, they could become increasingly useful for tasks such as answering medical questions, providing patient education, and even diagnosing diseases.

Of course, there are still some challenges that need to be addressed before AI can be widely adopted in healthcare. For example, LLMs need to be more accurate and reliable, and they need to be able to understand the nuances of human language.

However, the progress that has been made so far is promising, and it suggests that AI could have a major impact on the future of healthcare.

How can I learn more about Med-PaLM 2?

Google has not yet released Med-PaLM 2 to the public, but you can learn more about it by reading the research paper that was published in May. You can also follow Google on Twitter for updates on the development of the chatbot.

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