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Software developers want AI to give medical advice, but questions abound about accuracy
Software designers are testing specialized AI-powered chatbots that can give medical advice and diagnose conditions — but questions abound about accuracy.
This spring, Google unveiled an “AI Overview” feature where answers from the company’s chatbot started to appear above typical search results, including for health-related queries. While it might have sounded like a good idea in theory, there have been issues around health advice offered by the software.
In the first week that the bot was online, one user said Google AI gave incorrect, possibly lethal information about what to do if bitten by a rattlesnake. Another search resulted in Google recommending people eat “at least one small rock per day” for vitamins and minerals — advice was lifted from a satirical article.
Google says that they have since limited the inclusion of satirical and humor sites in their overviews, and removed some of the search results that went viral.
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“The vast majority of AI Overviews provide high quality information, with links to dig deeper on the web,” a Google spokesperson told CBS News. “For health queries, we’ve always had strong quality and safety guardrails in place, including disclaimers that remind people that it’s important to seek out expert advice. We’ve continued to refine when and how we show AI Overviews to ensure the information is high quality and reliable.”
CBS News Confirmed found that those fixes haven’t prevented all health misinformation. Queries about introducing solid food to infants under six months old still returned tips in late June. Babies aren’t supposed to begin eating solid food until the age of at least six months, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Searches on the health benefits of dubious wellness trends like detoxes or drinking raw milk also included debunked claims.
Despite the quirks and outright errors, many health care leaders say they remain optimistic about AI chatbots and how they can change the industry.
“People will access information that they need,” said Dr. Nigam Shah, a chief data scientist at Stanford Healthcare. “In the short term I’m a bit pessimistic, I think we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves. But in the long run I think these technologies are gonna do us a lot of good.”
Other advocates of chatbots are quick to point out that physicians don’t always get it right. Estimates vary, but a study by the Department of Health and Human Services from 2022 found as many as 2% of patients who go to an emergency department each year may suffer harm after a misdiagnosis from a health care provider.
Shah compared the use of chatbots to the early days of Google itself.
“When Google Search came around, people were panicking that people would self-diagnose and all hell will break loose. It didn’t happen,” Shah said. “Same thing. We’ll go through that phase (where) the new ones that aren’t fully formed will make mistakes, and a couple of them will be bad, but by and large, having information when there is no other option is a good thing.”
The World Health Organization is one of the companies dipping its toes into the AI waters. The organization’s chatbot, Sarah, pulls information from the WHO’s site and its trusted partners, making the answers less prone to factual errors. When asked how to limit the risk of a heart attack, Sarah gave information about managing stress, sleeping well and focusing on a healthy lifestyle.
Continued advancements in design and oversight might continue to improve such bots.
But if you’re turning to an AI chatbot for health advice today, note the warning that comes with Google’s version: “Info quality may vary.”
Police arrested a man on murder charges this month, 14 years after he allegedly killed a man in Virginia, but the victim’s body has never been found.
Shane Ryan Donahue, a Virginia man, is presumed deceased, the Prince William County Police Department said Tuesday. He was last seen leaving his parents’ home in Nokesville, Virginia, on March 22, 2010. Donahue, 23, was headed to his house in Nokesville, but never made it there.
Donahue was added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System after he vanished. According to records, Donahue did not have a car and regularly got rides from friends. He frequented Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Fauquier County, Virginia, and Northern Virginia.
The case stumped investigators, who followed a number of leads over the years. This spring, detectives reactivated the investigation and started looking at every detail of the case from scratch, officials said. They revisited people who had been interviewed during the initial investigation and reviewed “digital evidence in greater detail due to advances in analytical technology and modern police investigative practices,” according to a news release.
Officers said Donahue was last seen leaving his parents’ home with Timothy Sean Hickerson, now a 43-year-old Florida resident. Investigators connected Hickerson to a burglary at Donahue’s home that happened just days before the Virginia man disappeared.
Detectives got an arrest warrant this month and, with the help of Florida’s Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Hickerson was taken into custody in Palm Coast, Florida. Hickerson was charged with murder and burglary, is now set to be extradited to Virginia.
Former President Donald Trump, an avowed proponent of tax cuts, is floating the idea of reversing a measure passed during his tenure in the White House that effectively raised taxes for many U.S. homeowners.
In a post Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump suggested he would scrap a $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes (SALT) that was passed as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — a massive revamp that he has said boosted economic growth.
Now, in the run-up to the November election, Trump said in the post he would “get SALT back, lower your taxes, and so much more,” although he stopped short of offering details. Trump made the post ahead of a speech he’s giving Wednesday at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.
Trump’s new proposal for getting rid of his $10,000 SALT deduction cap comes as the presidential hopeful is pitching several additional tax cuts that would, if enacted, reduce taxes for major groups of voters. He’s also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits, a pledge that could get support from the nation’s senior citizens, as well as to end income taxes on tipped workers and on overtime pay, ideas that would help lower- and middle-income Americans.
Yet Trump’s reversal on the SALT deduction has sparked skepticism from lawmakers as well as economists and policy experts.
“So … now Trump is against the SALT tax cap which *checks notes* is a key part of the — only — major piece of legislation passed during his administration?” noted Chris Koski, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, on X.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat from Nassau, Queens, said in a statement on Wednesday that he is “happy that the former president is saying that he has finally reversed his devastating decision in 2017 to cap the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction.” He also urged Trump to convince Republican lawmakers to vote to restore the full deduction “if he is truly serious.”
The SALT deduction cap “has been a body blow to my constituents for the past 7 years,” Suozzi added.
Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote on X,”Donald Trump took away your SALT dedications and hurt so many Long Island families. Now, he’s coming to Long Island to pretend he supports SALT. It won’t work.”
Asked for details about Trump’s proposal to restore the SALT writeoff, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign told CBS MoneyWatch: “While his pro-growth, pro-energy policies will make life affordable again, President Trump is also going to quickly move tax relief for working people and seniors.”
Here’s what to know about the SALT deduction.
What is the SALT deduction?
The state and local tax deduction allows taxpayers who itemize to deduct property taxes, sales taxes and state or local income taxes from their federal income taxes. Prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there was no limit on how much people could deduct through the SALT deduction.
But the 2017 tax overhaul passed under Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 – a blow to many homeowners in states with high property taxes, many of which are Democratic leaning. At the time of the law’s passage, the Treasury Department estimated that almost 11 million taxpayers in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey would forfeit $323 billion in deductions.
Who benefits from the SALT deduction?
Homeowners with high property taxes, such as people in New York, New Jersey and California, were the biggest beneficiaries of the the full SALT deduction.
But some experts also noted that the SALT deduction primarily put more money in the pockets of higher-earning Americans. About 80% of the full SALT deduction had helped people earning more than $100,000 a year, according to the Tax Foundation.
What happened after Trump capped the SALT deduction at $10,000?
The limit has increasingly impacted middle-class homeowners across the U.S. because of rising property taxes and incomes. Some lawmakers have also sought to either repeal or increase the SALT cap, but none of those efforts have borne fruit.
Earlier this year, some lawmakers sought to double the SALT deduction cap to $20,000 for married couples, with the change retroactive for the 2023 tax year. But that bill was blocked in the House in February.
Won’t the SALT deduction cap expire anyway?
Yes, the SALT deduction cap is a provision that’s due to expire in 2025, as are many other parts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, such as a reduction of the individual tax brackets. But Trump has previously indicated he wants to extend the provisions in his signature tax law.
How much would it cost the U.S. to repeal the SALT deduction cap?
It won’t be cheap, according to the the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that focuses on budget and policy issues.
Eliminating the $10,000 deduction limit “would increase the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) by $1.2 trillion over a decade,” the group estimates, adding that such a measure would be a “costly mistake.”
Extending the TCJA’s tax cuts would increase the nation’s deficit by $3.9 trillion over the next decade, the group estimates. By adding in a expiration or repeal of the SALT deduction cap, that would grow to $5.1 trillion, it added.
“Lawmakers should not extend the TCJA without a plan to – at a minimum – offset the costs of extension, but ideally the plan would raise revenues relative to current law and help put the nation’s debt on a better trajectory,” the group said in a statement.
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