When OpenAI He presented this Thursday GPT-5the new language model behind Chatgpthe stressed that it was Best model for health use caseshaving obtained the best score in Healthbenchan evaluation created by 250 doctors. This, which sounds very good on paper, cannot be more irresponsible taking into account the failures that artificial intelligence tools commit frequently and that, that, In a context like health, a margin of error, even if it is small, can have serious consequences. This is what happened to a 60 -year -old American who was looking for Eliminate all chlorine from your diet, including common salt (sodium chloride), following the chatgpt adviceaccording to a recent study published in Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases.
The man, who had a ‘history of nutrition studies at the university’, came to think, after his conversations with Chatgpt, which could replace sodium chloride with sodium bromide that he got online.
Three months later he appeared in the urgencies of a hospital, paranoid and ensuring that his neighbor wanted to poison him. Despite being thirsty, he rejected the water they offered him in the hospital. He explained that he had started distill its own water at home and that followed an extremely restrictive vegetarian diet. He did not mention sodium bromide or his conversations with Chatgpt.
The analyzes performed by doctors revealed Multiple micronutrient deficienciesespecially essential vitamins. But his main problem was that he suffered A serious bromism case; That is, one Excessive bromine accumulation in the body.
At present it is not so, but A century ago these cases were more common and 10 % of the income in psychiatric ones were due to bromism. The You go brominesuch as potassium bromide, they were very used medications such as sedatives To calm anxiety, evade or sleep well. Sedatives with bromide They disappeared from the US market in 1989 After being prohibited by the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA).
The problem with bromide is that it accumulates easily in the body and, in excess, damages the nerve function. This causes problems such as serious skin rashes and mental disorders that are encompassed under the term Bromism.
The man got worse during his first hours in the hospital. It showed an ‘growing paranoia and auditory and visual hallucinations’ and even tried to escape facilities.
A involuntary psychiatric income and an antipsychotic was administered. He also received large amounts of fluids and electrolytes, since the best way to treat bromism is the ‘aggressive saline’ -that is, to hydrate the patient a lot to eliminate bromide in the urine. His bromide level had reached 1,700 mg/lwhen normal in a healthy person is 0.9 to 7.3 mg/l.
In summary, Trusting in chatgpt took a serious psychosis and hospitalized to recover.
As he explained later, the man had read about the problems of consuming too much common salt, which led him to eliminate sodium chloride from his diet, which in turn led him to Chatgpt … than He made him believe that he could use sodium bromide as a substitute.
The doctors who have explained the case in Annals of Internal Medicine: Clinical Cases point out that they never had access to the patient’s chatpt conversations. They believe that chatgpt 3.5 or 4.0 usedbut it is not clear that the chatbot expressly indicates what he did. Bromide salts can replace common salt, but not in the human organism: They are used in cleaning products and swimming treatments.
When the doctors did their own tests in Chatgpt 3.5, the language model with which chatgpt was launched in late 2022, saw that AI did include bromide in their response, but also pointed out that the context was important and that it was not suitable for all uses. However, the AI ‘He did not give a specific health warning or asked why we wanted to know, as we presume that a medical professional’ would do ‘they explain.
The report, published just before the launch of GPT-5, indicates that the free version of Chatgpt seems to respond better to this type of consultations, at the time of doing it. And if the same question is asked today to ChatgPT, he specifically states that ‘sodium chloride should not be replaced by chemical substances such as sodium bromide (NABR) or other halides not intended for human consumption; It can be toxic and cause neurological or metabolic disorders‘.
In any case, the man wanted to do his own research with Chatgpt and ended in a very dangerous situation for his health. History is a perfect example of how to trust too much on AI can lead to great mistakes.