🎙️Podcast: Dr. ChatGPT Will See You Now — The Real Promise (and Peril) of AI in Healthcare

One in three Americans are already asking AI about their health.

Most of them are doing it on the free tier of ChatGPT — the same tier OpenAI just announced will start running ads.

What could possibly go wrong?

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Abenaa Hayes — healthcare communications strategist, health equity advocate, and unapologetic innovation geek — to cut through the hype engine and get honest about where AI in healthcare is actually working, where it's wildly overhyped, and where the stakes are too high to get this wrong.

We get into the quiet revolution AI is driving in drug discovery and clinical trials, the dentist's AI that caught a cavity the human missed, the pharma advertising collision course nobody's talking about, and the bias problem that could make "Dr. ChatGPT" dangerous for the patients who already get the least from our healthcare system.

In this conversation, we cover:

Why "Dr. ChatGPT" is the new Dr. Google — and why that should scare you more than excite you

The three places AI is quietly transforming medicine (and the one place it's dangerously overhyped)

What happens when pharma ad dollars meet a free AI chatbot trained on your health questions

How bias creeps into medical AI — and why women and Black patients keep paying the price

Why the digital divide might be the most important AI healthcare issue no one is talking about

What the ChatGPT Health pilot actually does — and whether you should trust it with your data

Memorable moments

"Artificial intelligence isn't the same as human intelligence." Abenaa on why data isn't the same as judgment — and why a med student learns things in a hospital hallway that no LLM can be trained on. (~07:00)

"Women weren't included in clinical trials until the mid-1990s." The bias problem in medical AI isn't a bug in the model. It's a feature of the data we trained it on. (~20:30)

"Let's see what AI has to say." The moment my dentist pressed a button and AI caught a cavity he'd just missed — and why that's the best-case use of this technology. (~21:45)

Links & References

Abenaa Hayes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abenaahayes Website: https://www.elyseeconsulting.co

Mentioned in this episode Generate Biomedicines — AI-led drug discovery: https://generatebiomedicines.comCityblock Health — AI in Medicaid/Medicare care: https://www.cityblock.com Oura + Maven Clinic partnership: https://ouraring.com Rock Health — "1 in 3 Americans" stat: https://rockhealth.com Dr. Uche Blackstock — Advancing Health Equity: https://www.advancinghealthequity.com