Google Trials AI Chatbot for Medical Question-Answering

CEO Sundar Pichai of Google unveiled PaLM 2, an updated language model with improved linguistic, reasoning, and coding skills, at the I/O 2023 conference.

This model is trained in 100 languages and can perform various tasks. It will be integrated into Workspace apps and specialized versions called Med-PaLM for medical applications and Sec-PaLM for security purposes.

According to recent reports, Google has been testing an AI chatbot that can efficiently respond to medical-related enquiries.

Several reliable sources claim that since April, the Med-PaLM 2 has been put through testing at renowned facilities including the Mayo Clinic research facility.

Google believes that places with limited access to healthcare specialists will benefit most from this language model.

Greg Corrado, Google’s senior research director, voiced his opinion that Med-PaLM 2 can dramatically increase the role of AI in healthcare even if it is still in its early stages and he wouldn’t rely on it for his family’s healthcare.

The fact that Med-PaLM 2 has received specialized training on a hand-picked selection of professional medical demonstrations sets it apart from other AI chatbots like Bard, Bing, and ChatGPT.

Additionally, Google emphasized that customers taking part in the testing phase will retain ownership of their data, which will be protected by encryption and inaccessible to Google.

It is notable considering recent changes in Google’s data usage policy, where the company announced its intention to utilize publicly available information to train AI models like Bard and others.