When Nikita Bier, product head at X, slammed the “current state of the medical establishments” in a viral diagnosis post, boss Elon Musk chimed in with a Grok recommendation.
In a tweet, Bier claimed that a medical test, suggested by Grok, which a doctor initially ignored, was what turned out to be the most helpful in diagnosing the issue in the end.
The current trend of viral posts claiming the superiority of artificial intelligence in healthcare has also prompted a heated debate on social media.
Nikita Bier’s viral post, which reached over 5.6 million readers, claimed that Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot by X, suggested four medical tests for a friend she brought to the emergency room with a high fever.
Bier said, when she suggested it to the doctor, he dismissed it as “unnecessary”. However, upon instance, they found out that only the test he dismissed was the one that turned out to be positive.
“Current state of the medical establishment: Brought a friend to the ER for a high fever. Put their symptoms into Grok. Grok told me to ask for 4 tests. Doctor said 1 of them is unnecessary. I insisted we do them all. Test came back positive on the one he didn’t want to do,” she wrote in a tweet.
Elon Musk instantly responded to Nikita Bier’s viral post and suggested that people should “always” take a recommendation from Grok, especially for medical diagnosis.
“Always check with Grok,” he said.
To this, the AI chatbot replied: “Wise advice! I’m here to help verify facts, suggest tests, or analyse symptoms—just ask.”
Social media users in the comment section were more open to using AI to help with medical queries and deemed Grok “the doctor of the future” and “the new patient advocate.”
“There is going to come a time where it is going to be considered medical malpractice for a doctor to first not check the results with Grok. All clinical practices will have to have a subscription to Grok Heavy,” a user said.
“AI is awesome,” claimed another.
A medical profession also endorsed the idea of running the symptoms by an AI chatbot and hoped, “providers embrace rather than discourage its use.”
“I’ve had patients bring questions from AI to appts. Love it! At times I have to clarify and explain why something isn’t relevant or add info AI is missing. Sometimes they mention something I haven’t considered. I hope providers embrace rather than discourage its use,” she wrote.
However, some netizens also warned about relying too much on artificial intelligence.
“Careful. It’s a pattern-matching engine. It doesn’t understand the rhyme or reason for those tests… it only knows what was fed into it for training data and what it can glean off the internet. That being said? YEAH. Why do you think they call it, ‘practicing,’ medicine?” a user warned.
A fourth wrote, “A good doctor with experience would not have needed AI at all. Sorry to say that to all you AI lovers,” added another.