Are you ready for the AI revolution?

Though various forms of artificial intelligence have been in use for many years, the recent release of large language models such as ChatGPT have captivated media attention and raised questions and concerns. How accurate is AI? Will it enhance or replace jobs? How do we keep students from cheating?

There also are questions about AI in medicine, ranging from its impact on medical school education to ways it could help or hurt health care.
MSSC will explore the impact of AI on society and medicine at its May 2 membership meeting at NetApp’s offices at Wichita State University. RSVPs have already reached venue capacity there.

Monica Coley, a health care IT expert with Amazon, is the keynote speaker. There also will be a panel that includes Sam Antonios, MD, chief clinical officer at Ascension Via Christi; Mallik Karamsetty, director of technical services at Pfizer; and Andy Lin, a vice president at Mark III Systems, a national IT and AI company.
WSU, which coordinated the event, will provide an overview of its Innovation Campus. MSSC members can vote on next year’s MSSC board elections, with the results announced at the end of the meeting.

The term “artificial intelligence” has become a catchall phrase to describe tasks machines can do that once required human intelligence, such as visual or speech recognition. Machine learning is a subset of AI in which machines use algorithms and statistical models to learn from data and improve on their own.
Recent advancements are remarkable. Generative AI can compose poetry, write essays and create original art – all in seconds. ChatGPT even passed major professional exams, including U.S. Medical Licensing Examinations.

There are many medical applications of AI already in use. It is helping diagnose diseases, analyze images, predict patient outcomes and develop treatment plans. Some hospitals and clinics are using AI to record and transcribe patient interviews, summarize that information, and automatically fill out medical charts.

Where is this headed? How might physicians use ChatGPT and other AI? What are AI’s potential and risks? This will be explored in more depth at the May 2 membership meeting.