Babylon chatbot 'beats GPs' claim collapsed
Jun 2018
Babylon unveiled its AI symptom checker at the Royal College of Physicians and bragged it scored 81% on the MRCGP exam, but the claim could not be verified, and warned no chatbot can replace human judgment. Independent clinicians who later dissected Babylon's marketing study in The Lancet told Undark that the tiny, non-peer-reviewed test offered no proof the tool outperforms doctors and might even be worse.
Incident Details
Perpetrator:Startup
Severity:Facepalm
Blast Radius:Patient harm, eroded trust, and regulators forced real clinical trials.
Tech Stack
Babylon symptom checkerGP at HandAI triage chatbotMRCGP exam questions