NEW YORK — Komal Vilas Tatkare says he has no one to ask him about his most private health questions.
“There are only men and no women in my house,” said the 32-year-old mother and housewife from Mumbai. So I used this app to help me solve some personal problems. ”
The app she uses is powered by artificial intelligence running on OpenAI’s ChatGPT model, which is being developed by the Maina Mahila Foundation, a local women’s organization. Thatkare asks her Myna Bolo chatbot questions and provides answers. Through these interactions, Tatkare learned about contraceptives and how to take them.
Thatkare is one of 80 test users the foundation recruited to help train the chatbot. It utilizes a customized database of medical information related to sexual health, but the chatbot’s potential for success will depend on whether test users like Thatkare can train it. I am.
The chatbot, which is currently a pilot project, is emblematic of the many hopes that AI will have as part of the impact AI will have on healthcare around the world, and will be used in in-person clinics and trained healthcare workers. The aim is to provide accurate medical information with a personalized response that can reach far more people than before. . In this case, reproductive health-focused chatbots also provide important information that is difficult to access elsewhere due to social norms.
Suhani Jalota, founder and CEO of the Maina Mahila Foundation, which received the $100,000 donation, said: “This is a real opportunity to provide unbiased personal advice to women.” “Hopefully, this could be a real game-changer in terms of access to sexual and reproductive health information.” As part of an organization in a low- and middle-income country that is using AI to solve community problems, it received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last summer to develop a chatbot.
Funders such as the Gates Foundation, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, and Data.org are seeking to build this “missing middle” in AI development, particularly in areas such as health and education. These philanthropic efforts provide developers with access to AI tools they could not otherwise afford, and are a priority for companies and researchers, even if they were interested, because they lack high profit potential. You will be able to solve low-level problems.
“The Global North and high-income countries can no longer drive the agenda and decide what needs to be addressed and what does not need to be addressed in communities in the Global South,” said Gates Foundation Director of Global Health. Chairman Trevor Mandel wrote in October. “When it comes to AI, we cannot risk creating another chasm of inequality,” the online post added.
The Associated Press receives funding for reporting in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Myna Mahila Foundation recruited test users like Thatkare to write real questions. For example: “Does condom use cause HIV?” “Can I have sex during my period?” Foundation staff then closely monitor the chatbot’s responses to improve future responses. Develop a customized database of helpful, verified questions and answers along the way.
Chatbots are not yet ready for wide release. Jalota said the answers were not accurate enough and there were problems with translation. Users often compose questions in different languages, and chatbots may not be able to provide enough information to provide an appropriate response.
“I’m still not completely sure that women can understand everything clearly and that all the information we’re putting out is completely medically accurate,” Jalota said. he said. They are considering training some of the women to ask the chatbot’s prompts on behalf of others, but also aim to refine the chatbot so it can be released independently.
Dr. Christopher Longhurst, chief medical officer at the University of California, San Diego, is leading the adoption of AI tools in healthcare settings and will test and measure the impact of these new tools on patient health outcomes. said that it is important.
“You can’t just assume or trust or expect these things to work. You have to actually test them,” Longhurst said. He believes that the potential of AI in healthcare will be overestimated in the next two to three years. “But in the long term, over the next 10 years, I think AI will be as impactful as the introduction of penicillin in medicine.”
Zalota’s team is designing chatbots for healthcare settings, with funding from the Gates Foundation, to help them solve similar problems together, said Zamir Bray, the Gates Foundation’s interim vice president for technology dissemination. He also consulted with other projects.
The Maina Mahila Foundation is also partnering with another Gates grant recipient to propose developing privacy standards for handling data for reproductive health. The foundation is working with outside technology companies to develop chatbots and is also considering other measures to ensure user privacy.
With some women sharing their phones with family members, “we’ve been debating whether messages sent by women should be deleted within a certain period of time to increase privacy,” Jalota said.
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AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.
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