… Ben knew that his 75-year-old father had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a type of white blood cell cancer that is often slow-moving. But his dad, Joe Riley, had reassured his family that starting treatment was not urgent.
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Ben knew better than to confront his dad, a retired neuroscientist who bristled at anyone questioning his intellectual judgment. He needed more information, a plan, to persuade Joe, who was — apparently — dying of cancer thousands of miles away in Seattle.
Though Dr. Marzbani didn’t know it, Joe was routinely asking questions about his cancer to several generative A.I. tools, which often struggle to give accurate medical advice. …
He came away feeling so confident in his understanding of the science that declining treatment seemed to be the obvious choice.
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In a world where A.I. didn’t exist, maybe Joe — who was skeptical of doctors by default — would have refused treatment anyway. …
“Some of what was happening was about my father’s own psychology,” Ben said in an interview with the Times.
But A.I. wasn’t entirely blameless either. Joe was making decisions based on bad information packaged with the veneer of scientific expertise.
