How Soon Until AI Out-Diagnoses Your Doctor? - The Story
TechStuff
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
How often do you use ChatGPT to evaluate your ailments? Did it work? More and more people are turning to chatbots to diagnose their illnesses — with varied success. But when it does work, it can be life-changing. Dr. Dhruv Khullar heard of a case where ChatGPT identified the cause of one man’s years-long gastrointestinal struggles, in seconds. Given a medical system that can fail so many, Dr. Khullar started to wonder, “If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For?” That’s the title of a recent piece he wrote for The New Yorker. Oz sits down with Dr. Khullar to see if there is an answer to this question.
Additional Reading:
- If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For? | The New Yorker
- The Role of Doctors Is Changing Forever | The New Yorker
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:19.6 | Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Osvaloshin, and today I want to start with this story. |
| 0:24.6 | It's about a man, Matthew Williams, who experienced such intense stomach pain that he felt he had to go to the ER. |
| 0:32.6 | He was given laxatives and told that he was just constipated. |
| 0:36.6 | But when his symptoms worsened, |
| 0:38.8 | he went to a new ear for a second opinion. And it's there they realized that part of his |
| 0:43.7 | intestine is twisting on itself. This is serious. And Matthew immediately goes in for life-saving |
| 0:51.0 | surgery. But unfortunately, this isn't where his problems end. Every |
| 0:56.4 | time he eats, he has significant diarrhea and trouble keeping on weight. It's completely life-altering. |
| 1:04.4 | Matthew spends years talking to gastroenterologists and nutritionists, but no one is able to help |
| 1:09.8 | relieve his symptoms. chat GPT. |
| 1:14.6 | Here's Dr. Drew Kula. |
| 1:16.3 | He puts up his symptoms in and he tells the bot, you know, these are the things that are |
| 1:21.6 | bothering me most. |
| 1:23.2 | You know, when I eat certain foods, that's when it really starts to trigger my abdominal pain, |
| 1:28.8 | my diarrhea, et cetera. And within seconds, chat TBT comes up with this diagnosis that, hey, |
| 1:34.7 | the foods that you're describing are high in this compound called oxalate that he had never |
| 1:40.4 | heard of that's found in leafy greens and other types of foods. And he takes that |
| 1:44.1 | information to a nutritionist and they design a diet and basically he has his life back. On the one |
| 1:49.5 | hand, this is absolutely incredible. ChatGPT gave Matthew his life back. On the other hand, a story |
| 1:57.3 | like this makes you start to question, what are doctors actually for? |
... |
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