William Hersh, M.D., who has taught generations of medical and clinical informatics students at Oregon Health & Science University, found himself curious about the growing influence of artificial intelligence. He wondered how AI would perform in his own class.
William Hersh, M.D., who has taught generations of medical and clinical informatics students at Oregon Health & Science University, found himself curious about the growing influence of artificial intelligence. He wondered how AI would perform in his own class.
So, he decided to try an experiment.
He tested six forms of generative, large-language AI models—for example ChatGPT—in an online version of his popular introductory course in biomedical and health informatics to see how they performed compared with living, thinking students. A study published in the journal npj Digital Medicine, revealed the answer: Better than as many as three-quarters of his human students.
“This does raise concern about cheating, but there is a larger issue here”, Hersh said. “How do we know that our students are actually learning and mastering the knowledge and skills they need for their future professional work?”
As a professor of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology in the OHSU School of Medicine, Hersh is especially attuned to new technologies. The role of technology in education is nothing new, Hersh said, recalling his own experience as a high school student in the 1970s during the transition from slide rules to calculators.
