Parents are putting more trust into ChatGPT than actual doctors, study finds

Parents are trusting ChatGPT for medical advice over actual doctors and nurses, a new study found.

Researchers at the University of Kansas also found that parents also say AI-generated text is credible, trustworthy and moral.

“When we began this research, it was right after ChatGPT first launched — we had concerns about how parents would use this new, easy method to gather health information for their children,” lead author and doctoral student Calissa Leslie-Miller said in a release. “Parents often turn to the internet for advice, so we wanted to understand what using ChatGPT would look like and what we should be worried about.”

Participants in the study were given health-related text, reviewing content generated by healthcare professionals and the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT. They were not told who, or what, authored the texts. They were asked to rate the texts based on five criteria - perceived morality, trustworthiness, expertise, accuracy and how likely they would be to rely on the information.

In many cases, parents couldn’t tell which content was generated by ChatGPT or by the experts. When there were significant differences in ratings, ChatGPT was rated to be more trustworthy, accurate and reliable than the expert-generated content.

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Source: The Independent, 30 October 2024