>checking my now diagnosed gastritis I got stuff from GERD to CRC depending on which symptoms I decide to stress and which events I emphasize in the history

Exactly the same behavior as a conversation with an idealized human doctor, perhaps. One who isn't tired, bored, stressed, biased, or just overworked.

The value that folks get from chatgpt for medical advice is due in large part to the unhurried pace of the interaction. Didn't get it quite right? No doctor huffing and tapping their keyboard impatiently. Just refine the prompt and try as many times as you like.

For the 80s HNers out there, when I hear people talk about talking with chatgpt, Kate Bush's song A Deeper Understanding comes immediately to mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeper_Understanding?wprov=sfl...

ChatGPT and similar tools hallucinate and can mislead you.

Human doctors, on the other hand ... can be tired, hungover, thinking about a complicated case ahead of them, nauseous from a bad lunch, undergoing a divorce, alcoholics, depressed...

We humans have a lot of failure modes.