Ethics of large language models in medicine and medical research

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are a type of deep learning model that are trained on vast amounts of text data with the goal of generating new text that closely resembles human responses. The release of ChatGPT (OpenAI, San Francisco, CA, USA), an LLM-based chatbot, on Nov 30, 2022, propelled LLMs to the forefront of public attention and made them accessible to millions of people to experiment with. Since then, medical practitioners and researchers have been exploring potential applications of LLMs, as much of medical practice and research revolve around large text-based tasks, such as presentations, publications, documentation, and reporting.