Cancer patients cannot wait for us to perfect chatbots or AI systems. They need reliable solutions now—and not all chatbots, at least so far, are up to the task.
I often think of the dedicated and overworked oncologists I have interviewed who find themselves drowning in an ever-expanding sea of data, genomics, imaging, treatment trials, side-effect profiles, and patient co-morbidities. No human can process all of that unaided. Many physicians, in an understandable and even laudable effort to stay afloat, are turning to AI chatbots, decision-support models, and clinical-data assistants to help make sense of it all. But in oncology, the stakes are too high for blind faith in black boxes.
