Cited by 160Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and EducationBiomedical Text Mining and OntologiesArtificial Intelligence in Education

Analysis of large-language model versus human performance for genetics questions

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Duong, Dat, Solomon, Benjamin D.·2024·European Journal of Human Genetics

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Large-language models like ChatGPT have recently received a great deal of attention. One area of interest pertains to how these models could be used in biomedical contexts, including related to human genetics. To assess one facet of this, we compared the performance of ChatGPT versus human respondents (13,642 human responses) in answering 85 multiple-choice questions about aspects of human genetics. Overall, ChatGPT did not perform significantly differently (p = 0.8327) than human respondents; ChatGPT was 68.2% accurate, compared to 66.6% accuracy for human respondents. Both ChatGPT and humans performed better on memorization-type questions versus critical thinking questions (p < 0.0001). When asked the same question multiple times, ChatGPT frequently provided different answers (16% of initial responses), including for both initially correct and incorrect answers, and gave plausible explanations for both correct and incorrect answers. ChatGPT's performance was impressive, but currently demonstrates significant shortcomings for clinical or other high-stakes use. Addressing these limitations will be important to guide adoption in real-life situations.

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Authors
Duong, D., & Solomon, B. D.
Affiliations
National Institutes of Health (US)
Corresponding author
Solomon, Benjamin D.
Venue
European Journal of Human Genetics
Published
2023-05-29
Volume
32
Issue
4
Pages
466-468
ISSN
  • 1018-4813 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-5438
OpenAlex
W4378603221
Cited by
159
References
12
Citations by year
2026: 15 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 59 · 2023: 42 · 2019: 1
FWCI
6.29
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • European Journal of Human Genetics (publishedVersion)
  • medRxiv (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (submittedVersion)
Funders
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | NIH | National Human Genome Research Institute (N/A)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Artificial Intelligence in Education
Keywords
large language models, ChatGPT, human genetics education, multiple-choice questions

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