Searching for Doctors and Lawyers with GenAI: Houston, We have a Problem!
The future of Search as we know it is happening now and billions of dollars are on the line. A lot has been made about safety and ethics including Biden’s Executive Order regarding Generative AI. The order addressed biases, safety, and civil rights issues. But, one of the core questions for folks is how this will effect our lives when we try and find information. What if we want to find a doctor or a lawyer?
The latest version of OpenAIs’ ChatGPT4 has been trained on a corpus of data that is absolutely massive. Wikipedia describes GPT4:
As a transformer-based model, GPT-4 uses a paradigm where pre-training using both public data and “data licensed from third-party providers” is used to predict the next token. After this step, the model was then fine-tuned with reinforcement learning feedback from humans and AI for human alignment and policy compliance.
Pay specific attention to the phrase “data licensed from third-party providers.”
If I want to find an orthopedic doctor in Philadelphia, Google has trained us for over twenty-five years what to expect. We get the standard list with a bunch of links and sponsored ads.
Billions and billions of dollars have been spent over the years to get placement in the first couple of pages of Googles Search results. These positions are considered pure gold when it comes to clicks and converting Searches into customers.
GPT4 appears to use “licensed content” from Philadelphia Magazine to determine the best orthopedic doctors in Philadelphia. The position of the doctors on the page are no longer influenced by a specific purchase of a keyword sequence or phrase. ChatGPT 4 uses Bing to “Browse the Web” and is current as of April 2023.
We need to start paying attention to Bing, because Microsoft invested $13 Billion into OpenAI and the Bing Search Engine may influence the results in ChatGPT. It’s interesting to note that Facebook is used as a “Review Source” for Rothman Orthopaedics and Philadelphia Orthopaedic Associates and the Chamber of Commerce is a “Review Source” for NJ Spine. WTF, the Chamber of Commerce is the source of patient truth for orthopedics???? Somebody's gonna have to break the news to ZocDoc, Healthgrades, and WebMD.
Not sure if sponsoring Charitable Donations to the Chamber of Commerce caused the Bing Search to use this organization as a key metric for finding a doctor? It’s not only doctors that are being rated by the Chamber of Commerce in Bing Searches. Lawyers are dealing with the same indignity of having Chamber of Commerce ratings influence Search in Bing.
This may be one of the reasons Bing was not that popular to begin with as a Search tool. But, with the incredible popularity of OpenAIs’ ChatGPT, it’s time to give Bing another look, especially with the recent introduction of GPT bots for the masses. OpenAIs’ Dev Day had a slew of announcements. One of the most consequential announcements is the ability for the masses to create their own ChatGPTs’ on top of GPT4.
ChatGPT made it to 100m users in 2 months, which is faster than any app ever. The ability to create no-code custom GPTs’ will only increase the usage of the OpenAI product by the general public. People will be using GPTs and may not know what they have been trained on. Doctors and lawyers are going to have to better tune their marketing with an understanding of what directories and websites are being used in Generative AI searches.
As Generative AI becomes more entrenched in applications and more people begin using the technology to make decisions' instead of traditional Search, Doctors and Lawyers will have to pay more attention to where the training data is from and how to mitigate datasets that are not going to be kind to a business.
The fact that some searches for Doctors in Philadelphia reference Philadelphia Magazine and searches for Lawyers are based on Chamber of Commerce and Lawyer Directories is a trend that has been building since folks wanted more clarity about the sources of information. OpenAI’s older model ChatGPT 3.5 basically punted on providing any sources or even definitive information about doctors and lawyers.
When ChatGPT 3.5 was first introduced nearly a year ago on November 30, 2022 it didn’t give any sources or citations for information produced about best Doctors or Lawyers. Lot’s of people, including countries, and the European Union complained about the lack of citations and sources in the product. There was even a cottage industry of companies that proclaimed they could derive the sources from the ChatGPT results.
The Chamber of Commerce citation for Lawyers and the Philly Magazine citations for Doctors is related to OpenAI and other Generative AI companies taking a proactive step to license content. OpenAIs’ efforts to license content for news information appears to be well founded. For instance, deals with OpenAI and the Associated Press News Archive makes a lot of sense. Trying to figure out the best doctors or lawyers, not so much.
It doesn’t appear that there is a rhyme or reason to the content licensing for Directories and Review Websites. There are certainly ways around specifically using training data for making these types of recommendations for potential Patients and potential Clients. The use of embeddings and submission of supplemental content could help alleviate this situation which is exactly what the founders of Giupedi have developed.
Whatever you want to call this nexus of Search Marketing to Generative AI Marketing, go for it; Brave New World or a Revolution. Just remember, Video Killed the Radio Star.
Edward Bukstel and Gerard Foti, D.O.
Giupedi, Inc.
