5 ways to use Chat GPT (AI) for medical school
Where did ChatGPT come from and what is it up to?
And what does this have to do with medical school admissions or medical education and practice?
ChatGPT is an open-access chatbot released by OpenAI on November 30th, 2022, the AI lab founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman. More than a million people signed up in the first five days it was released and as I write this it is currently down due to too many people accessing it.
Open AI is not just “chatty”, it can build code and can turn text into visuals (DALL-E) or make you into a cool avatar (LENSA) or create videos with an AI likeness (Synthesia).
Chat GPT specifically allows you to enter text and responds to you. GPT stands for “Generative Pretrained Transformers” which are capable of understanding and producing strings of complex thoughts and ideas. When you enter a command ChatGPT is pulling data from everywhere it can get its hands on and feeds it into a transformer model and then maps the relationships between different pieces of information and guesses what text belongs together in certain contexts.
People are entertaining themselves by giving it instructions and seeing what pops out and it is shockingly good. From writing a podcast to writing poems to taglines for fictitious reality TV characters, to a graduation speech written to Harvard graduates by Satan - Chat GPT has been very, very busy and entertaining. (Check out #CHATGPT on twitter). The creativity of how people have chosen to challenge the chatbot has been amazing. Examples range from “Explain how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR”, and “Write a Seinfeld episode where all the characters are from the Sopranos.”
The fun thing about ChatGPT is that it has memory and can take on personas. Here are “10 cool things you can do with Chat GPT” and here are “Five remarkable chats that will help you understand ChatGPT” and the “Top 10 most Insane things Chat GPT has done this week”
Why is Chat GPT catching on like wildfire? Not just for the entertainment value. It can actually work as a teacher and personal tutor and find errors in work. You can ask it to explain things to you at a high-school or elementary reading level.
Here are 5 ways to use CHAT GPT as a premed or in medical school:
As a teacher
Brainstorm creative ideas
Address health literacy
Qualitative research
To plagiarize and cheat
Here are 5 ways you can use Chat GPT in medical education:
1. As a teacher. Can you explain XYZ in more detail? For example, “Explain the Krebs cycle at a high school level?”
“The Krebs cycle, also known as the citric acid cycle or the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, is a series of chemical reactions that take place in the cells of living organisms. These reactions are important because they generate energy in the form of ATP, which cells can use to power their various functions.
At a high school level, the Krebs cycle can be thought of as a series of steps in which cells break down glucose (a type of sugar) to release energy. The process begins with the conversion of glucose into a molecule called acetyl-CoA, which enters the Krebs cycle. From there, the acetyl-CoA is broken down into smaller molecules through a series of chemical reactions. As these reactions take place, the cells release energy, which is used to produce ATP.
The Krebs cycle is a crucial part of cellular respiration, which is the process by which cells produce energy from the food we eat. It is named after the British scientist Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, who first described the cycle in 1937. Understanding the Krebs cycle can help us learn more about how cells generate energy and how this process is essential for life.”
2. Brainstorming creative ideas. For example, Chat GPT can help generate unique mnemonics for studying. It could also help you generate interesting research questions.
3. To address health literacy. For example: Explain the physiology of a heart attack at a high school level:
“A heart attack, also known as a myocardial infarction, is a serious medical condition that occurs when the blood supply to the heart is blocked, causing damage to the heart muscle. This typically happens when a blood clot forms in one of the coronary arteries, which are the blood vessels that supply the heart with oxygen-rich blood. When the clot blocks the flow of blood, the heart muscle is deprived of oxygen and nutrients, leading to cell death and damage to the heart.
At a high school level, the physiology of a heart attack can be explained by understanding how the heart works and the role of the coronary arteries. The heart is a muscular organ that pumps blood to the rest of the body, providing oxygen and nutrients to the cells. The coronary arteries are responsible for supplying the heart with blood, and when they become blocked, the heart is unable to function properly. This can lead to chest pain, shortness of breath, and other symptoms, which are often the first signs of a heart attack.
Treatment for a heart attack typically involves medications to dissolve the blood clot and restore blood flow to the heart. In some cases, surgical procedures may be necessary to remove the clot and repair any damage to the heart. If a heart attack is not treated promptly, it can lead to serious complications, such as heart failure or arrhythmias, which can be life-threatening. Understanding the physiology of a heart attack can help people recognize the signs and seek medical help promptly, which can save lives.”
4. Potentially for qualitative research? I have seen some examples of how you could use it to extract data from text. Although, this is not a simple procedure and is very prompt dependent so there are likely easier ways to do this.
5. And lastly - to do the work for you. The unethical use: to write your essays, your homework, or your medical school application. Chat GPT can only write a certain length response at a time but people have found a way around this. Here is a response to a history essay for a 200 level class at Amherst. It can only write 8 paragraphs at a time, but this student found a way around it by getting it to continue to refine the essay. If an essay is regurgitating information and does not require originality or personal reflection you might get away with it. In a previous blog, I addressed how schools screen for plagiarism in applications. Will those programs be able to detect medical school applications written by ChatGPT? This article describes an assignment for an MBA class to use Chat GPT and the essays were not detected by Turnitin, a popular antiplagiarism software. Here is another example. However, the tone of most CHAT GPT’s writing is authoritative and not always correct. Sometimes it doesn’t even make sense. It also does not display a particularly deep understanding of certain topics - like the importance of mitochondria.
How will admissions manage this? It might lead to more programs including a “proctored” writing sample as part of their interview process. The MCAT used to have a writing sample - maybe that will make a reappearance? Or plagiarism programs such as Turnitin will eventually have to find a way to catch up to the technology.
If you ask about an esoteric topic it lacks accuracy. It also lacks accuracy when doing things such as reporting the news or anything current. It builds in the same bias that is found all over the internet into its answer. So for now, it still needs human oversight and fact-checking.
Let’s continue to use Chat GPT for good - entertainment and education.
