Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.”

But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text — known in the industry as hallucinations — can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.

Experts said that such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos.

More concerning, they said, is a rush by medical centers to utilize Whisper-based tools to transcribe patients’ consultations with doctors, despite OpenAI’ s warnings that the tool should not be used in “high-risk domains.”

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ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Why is generative AI even needed for audio transcription? We’ve had decent voice recognition tools for years even on cheap consumer grade stuff.

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- spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  We also used to have decent web searches!
  
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  - InverseParallax@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Because with normal algorithms you have someone to blame.
    
    AI is a trick to hide when you steer the results the way you want.
    
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- TheBlackLounge@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Whisper really is a lot better when it works, and it’s free. The problem is that it refuses to produce gibberish or give up when it doesn’t work. You’ll always need an editor.
  
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  - Assman@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The toaster oven I just invented works much better than a traditional one. It reheats French fries perfectly, you can dehydrate in it, makes succulent roasted chicken, and about 2.5% of the time it burns down your house. You’ll always need to keep an eye on it to make sure that doesn’t happen. Remember though, much better than a traditional one.
    
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  - wdx@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    This definition of “better” feels like claiming that a Beeper that’s constantly hooked to power is the perfect alarm because it warns you every time someone is trying to break in - while entirely ignoring that it is just constantly blaring.
    
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- ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  No, we really haven’t had on-device voice recognition that meets any definition of “decent”. Anything reasonable phones out to “the cloud” for decent voice recognition.
  
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  - LavenderDay3544@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    So? I’d rather have my software talk to a server than be downright wrong just so another business can climb onto the AI bandwagon.
    
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- JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Because AI!
  
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sbv@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Some examples

In this example, the speaker said, “as the um, the, her father dies not too long after he remarried….” while the program transcribes that as " It’s fine. It’s just too sensitive to tell. She does die at 65….”

In this example, the speaker said, “and after she got the telephone he began to pray” while the program transcribes that as “I feel like I’m going to fall. I feel like I’m going to fall, I feel like I’m going to fall….”

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- Sludgehammer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Wow, that’s bad. I thought it would be more of a “confusing a sentence for a similar sounding one” type thing but from the above and the article it’s just generating gibberish and sticking them into the transcriptions.
  
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  - TheBlackLounge@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s actually extremely good at figuring out confusing text. It gets weird when the audio quality is bad.
    
    I use it for generating subs for obscure movies.
    
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- BluesF@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This one was wild:
  
  In an example they uncovered, a speaker said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.”
  
  But the transcription software added: “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece … I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.”
  
  From picking up and object to mass murder lmao. Not even close!
  
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  - sbv@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    But it gets the spirit right
    
    /s
    
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- JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Sounds less like transcribing word for word, and more like attempting to summarize and parse meaning on the fly. AIS have notoriously little grasp on reasoning and logic, so it’s interesting how the output holds up in a court of law.
  
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TootSweet@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
LLMs in medicine. What could go wrong?

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- QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Whisper isn’t a large language model.
  
  It’s a speech to text (STT) model.
  
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  - Llewellyn@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Which has the same concept as the LLM under the hood, hasn’t it?
    
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QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As someone who uses Whisper fairly often, it’s obvious that they’ve trained off of a bunch of YouTube videos.

Most of the time it’s very accurate, but there have definitely been a few times in long transcription sessions where it will randomly hallucinate that someone is saying “Don’t forget to like and subscribe!” When nothing was said anywhere near that.

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- rustydrd@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s hilarious. I just love how AI is basically like a 6-year-old who weaves his favorite new expressions into everything without fully understanding what it means.
  
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fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
A few months back my GP asked if they could use a transcription thing they were trialling during my consult.

He seemed shocked when I declined.

I just don’t understand why anyone would actually want that?

I want my doctor to listen to what I tell him, and I don’t really want what I say to be used for any other purpose, because no other purpose would be to my benefit.

Next week they’ll be adding to share “basic characteristics” about me with third party “wellness partners”.

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RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Microsoft teams has some automatic transcript capabilities that are so hilariously bad, it’s hard to believe Microsoft released it.

I guess they use the same service.

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- darkevilmac@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s super hit or miss, odds are it’s using azure though and not just running a model locally.
  
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  - RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The last transcript I’ve seen it guessed the wrong language and literally didn’t get one word right.
    
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vk6flab@lemmy.radio ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
AI does not mean Artificial Intelligence, it means Assumed Intelligence.

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linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Smell is currently best used as a tool for helping a real human do work. It has to be managed and governed and checked after. It’s still capable of amplifying the amount of work we can do, But it’s kind of like having to have an architect look after engineering work, you can’t just pass the buck and pretend that it’s going to be fine.

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ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
maybe that’s just the ai’s internal monologue leaking through?

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zoostation@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Oh word?

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