Artificial Intelligence

AI Is Already Beating Human Doctors in Medical Tests

Robo-docs are not likely to take over healthcare anytime soon, but they could do more to assist human doctors—if we let them.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | From the August/September 2026 issue

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(Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: iStock)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems may outperform doctors at diagnosing patients. In a recent series of experiments led by researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, a preview of the OpenAI large language model (LLM) known as o1 bested human physicians in multiple tests of clinical and diagnostic reasoning.

"We tested the AI model against virtually every benchmark, and it eclipsed both prior models and our physician baselines," said Harvard Medical School professor Arjun K. Manrai, one of the study's senior authors. Using case studies, the researchers had o1—an older model since usurped by o3—generate a list of........

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