LONDON: Tossing and turning at night has been linked to multiple health woes, from weakened immune systems to higher risk of inflammation to diminished cognitive abilities.
Even those in the prime of life and at peak fitness can feel less than themselves after a restless night – so it goes without saying that one of the main causes, sleep apnea, should be regarded as a serious health issue.
But according to Deeban Ratneswaran of King’s College London, five of the most widely used artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are inclined to tell patients that sleep apnea is no big deal.
In a paper presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) conference in Barcelona (Sept 5-9), Ratneswaran explained how in over 700 exchanges between would-be patients and AI platforms, the chatbots in some cases portrayed symptoms as not serious and sought to dissuade users from seeing a doctor when they showed reluctance to seek treatment.
In contrast, if would-be patients were keen to be examined, they were encouraged to make an appointment, whether it was ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek or Grok fielding the query.
According to Ratneswaran, the results not only show that AI cannot be relied on for medical advice, but also that it continues to exhibit sycophancy, a much-criticised flaw seen across most systems.
The chatbots’ inclination "to tell you what you want to hear" led to them u-turning on medically solid advice "more than a third of the time" and "purely because of how the patient talked," Ratneswaran said.
The bots "caved in" even in the most serious examples, such as the risk of a patient nodding off while driving, and even went as far as omitting such life-threatening details when giving advice.
No matter what an AI says, what a patient should do, if concerned about possible sleep apnea, is make an appointment with a clinic.
"Anyone experiencing possible symptoms of sleep apnea should always speak to their doctor for further advice," said Io Hui a respiratory specialist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the research.
The condition manifests as snoring and waking multiple times during the night as breathing stops – though a sufferer often has no awareness of or recollection of the disruption – though they can feel tired the next day.
Apnea not only leads to "excessive sleepiness,” according to the ERS, but adds to high blood pressure and raises the risk of any and all of stroke, heart disease and diabetes. – dpa
