Can you rely on AI for CPR instructions?

By Jim Leffman via SWNS

Only just over 10 percent of artificial intelligence platforms can give correct verbal instructions when asked how to perform CPR, a study shows.

If bystanders ask apps such as Siri or Alexa how to perform CPR in an emergency they might be taken to details of a film called CPR or even Colorado Public Radio, researchers found.

If you have been trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation or receive instructions from an emergency operator, the technique is associated with a two- to four-fold increase in survival.

But their chances will plummet if instead of dialing 911 you try and get help from AI.

Researchers from Mass General Brigham, New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Boston Children’s Hospital investigated the quality of CPR directions provided by AI voice assistants for the study published in JAMA Network Open.

Nearly half of the responses from the voice assistants were unrelated to CPR and only 28 percent suggested calling emergency services.

A total of 34 percent of responses provided CPR instruction and 12 percent provided verbal instructions.

The team posed eight verbal questions to four voice assistants, including Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant’s Nest Mini, and Microsoft’s Cortana.

They also typed the same queries into ChatGPT, which provided the most relevant information for all queries among the platforms tested.

All the answers were evaluated by two board-certified emergency medicine physicians.

Senior author Dr. Adam Landman, senior vice president of digital at Mass General Brigham and an attending emergency physician said: “Our findings suggest that bystanders should call emergency services rather than relying on a voice assistant.

“Voice assistants have potential to help provide CPR instructions, but need to have more standardized, evidence-based guidance built into their core functionalities.”