ChatGPT not reliable tool to gauge development delays in children, finds research

If you ask ChatGPT to gauge your child’s development, stop this practice. According to new research, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT do not perform like pediatricians in certain tasks like developmental delays.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT have lately been used in the healthcare industry but these are still early days for the technology to give accurate answers.

In the new study, ChatGPT displayed lower concern than physicians in 36 per cent of potential developmental delays.

The research looked at 108 different concerns in children up to five-years-old.

“This study reveals how pediatricians may have more conviction than ChatGPT when it comes to denoting certain developmental delays as abnormal,” said Joseph G Barile, research assistant at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in the US.

While ChatGPT showed higher concern than physicians in only 5 per cent of cases, pediatricians identified approximately 30 per cent more potential developmental delays than the AI chatbot.

Overall, ChatGPT made different conclusions about the abnormality of a potential delay than pediatricians 41 per cent of the time.

ChatGPT and pediatricians were most inconsistent with social, emotional, and behavioural concerns rather than physical, and for children older than one, the study noted.