Elon Musk reacts online as Grok’s medical advice proves accurate in emergency room case.
A surprising medical moment with artificial intelligence has caused new outrage online. The episode was revealed after Nikita Bier, head of products at X (formerly Twitter), posted about how Grok, the AI chatbot created for X identified a serious health concern that a doctor first missed.
Bier described the incident on X, recalling that he had taken a friend to the emergency room because of a fever. Inquisitive, he input the symptoms into Grok, which suggested four tests. But the attending physician considered one of them to be unnecessary.
"Current state of the medical establishment: Brought a friend into the ER with a high fever. Input their symptoms into Grok. Grok instructed me to ask for 4 tests. Doctor informed me that 1 of them isn't necessary. I required us to do all of them. Test returned positive on the one he didn't want to take," Bier posted.
Elon Musk, X's owner and one of the most prominent sponsors of Grok's creation, responded to Bier's post with a curt but revealing remark, 'Always check with Grok'.
His response, in turn, became popular fast, sparking a broader conversation on the increasing use of AI in medicine.
The discussion made most users on the platform ponder over the developing relationship between AI and the medical profession. One commented, "In another 10 years, AI will have replaced approximately 2/3rds of the medical establishment."
Another member contributed, "Medicine is a good example of a profession where AI can do better than humans since it's all about trying to find patterns and data crunching. Gonna be a huge improvement in treatment if the business allows AI to come in."
Emphasizing the fallibility of human beings in medicine, someone penned, "People must understand that doctors are working at a profession. They're not always 100% right. Doctors live and die. Knowledge is passed down and watered down across generations. There are schools of thought, schools of training, schools of teaching, and schools of practicing. Grok is based."
After Bier posted, others replied with their own experiences when Grok provided worthwhile medical advice. "Grok suggested I get iron deficiency tested, but the specialist didn't think it was necessary. Did so anyway, and there was indeed a deficiency that needed correction," a user commented. Another wrote, "It happened to me too when I had an inflamed lymph node. Grok saved my life."
Nikita Bier is a technology entrepreneur who is popular for building viral social products like TBH (acquired by Facebook) and Gas (acquired by Discord). He has joined X as the product leader recently and is also a venture partner at Lightspeed. He also works as an adviser to the Solana Foundation.
