What is AI? An introduction for clinicians.

BACKGROUND

Artificial intelligence (AI) is thought by many to likely underpin the next revolution in clinical medicine. The rapidly evolving terminology in AI - including terms such as 'generative AI', 'machine learning' and 'natural language processing' - can present a barrier to clinical adoption.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this article is to give a non-technical overview of AI and its medical applications, with particular emphasis on large language models.

DISCUSSION: The term 'AI' suggests semantic understanding. This impression is reinforced by text output eerily similar to human writing. However, AI has not yet become intelligent in the common understanding of that word. The apparent semantic understanding is not actually there. Knowing this is crucial to avoiding misapplications of this nevertheless revolutionary technology.