OpenAI o1-Preview vs. ChatGPT in Healthcare: A New Frontier in Medical AI Reasoning

Abstract

This editorial explores the recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence with the newly-released OpenAI o1-Preview, comparing its capabilities to the traditional ChatGPT (GPT-4) model, particularly in the context of healthcare. While ChatGPT has shown many applications for general medical advice and patient interactions, OpenAI o1-Preview introduces new features with advanced reasoning skills using a chain of thought processes that could enable users to tackle more complex medical queries such as genetic disease discovery, multi-system or complex disease care, and medical research support. The article explores some of the new model's potential and other aspects that may affect its usage, like slower response times due to its extensive reasoning approach yet highlights its potential for reducing hallucinations and offering more accurate outputs for complex medical problems. Ethical challenges, data diversity, access equity, and transparency are also discussed, identifying key areas for future research, including optimizing the use of both models in tandem for healthcare applications. The editorial concludes by advocating for collaborative exploration of all large language models (LLMs), including the novel OpenAI o1-Preview, to fully utilize their transformative potential in medicine and healthcare delivery. This model, with its advanced reasoning capabilities, presents an opportunity to empower healthcare professionals, policymakers, and computer scientists to work together in transforming patient care, accelerating medical research, and enhancing healthcare outcomes. By optimizing the use of several LLM models in tandem, healthcare systems may enhance efficiency and precision, as well as mitigate previous LLM challenges, such as ethical concerns, access disparities, and technical limitations, steering to a new era of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven healthcare.

Keywords: ai ethics; artificial intelligence; chain of thought; chatgpt; complex reasoning; genetic disease discovery; hallucinations; healthcare applications; openai o1-preview; transparency in ai and llms black box.

Figure 1. Screenshot taken on September 14, 2024, from the desktop version of the ChatGPT interface, displaying the available models under the GPT-4o and o1-Preview families.

The image shows a comparison of models, including GPT-4o (optimized for complex tasks), the o1-Preview model (designed for advanced reasoning), and the o1-mini model (optimized for faster reasoning). This illustrates the increasingly available options for users to select different AI capabilities, depending on the complexity and nature of the tasks they intend to perform.