Why a chatbot might seem more empathetic than a human physician

An April 28 article in JAMA Internal Medicine, “Comparing Physician and Artificial Intelligence Chatbot Responses to Patient Questions Posted to a Public Social Media Forum,” generated a great deal of discussion — much of it horrified.

In particular, people are focusing on the study’s conclusions: that “chatbot responses were longer than physician responses, and the study’s health care professional evaluators preferred chatbot-generated responses over physician responses 4 to 1. Additionally,...