How would you like it if, when stumped or just in need of some help with an unfamiliar situation, your doctor consulted a free, ad-supported AI chatbot? That’s not actually a hypothetical. They probably are doing that, a new report from NBC News says. It’s called OpenEvidence, and NBC says it was “used by about 65% of U.S. doctors across almost 27 million clinical encounters in April alone.” An earlier Bloomberg report on OpenEvidence from seven months ago said it had signed up 50% of American doctors at the time—so reported growth is rapid. The OpenEvidence homepage trumpets the bot as “America’s Official Medical Knowledge Platform,” and says healthcare professionals qualify for unlimited free use, but non-doctors can try it for free without creating accounts. It gives long, detailed answers with extensive citations that superficially look—to me, a non-doctor—trustworthy and credible.
NBC interviewed doctors for its story, and apparently pressed them on how often they actually click those links to the sources of information, and “most said they only do so when they get an unexpected result,” NBC’s report says. While it’s free, OpenEvidence is not a charity. It’s a Miami-headquartered tech unicorn with a billionaire founder named David Nadler, and as of January it boasted a $12 billion valuation. NBC says it’s backed by some of the all stars of Sand Hill Road: Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, along with Google Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Nvidia.
