ORIGINAL ARTICLE   

Panminerva Medica 2023 December;65(4):461-6

DOI: 10.23736/S0031-0808.23.04853-X

Copyright © 2023 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

ChatGPT: unlocking the potential of Artifical Intelligence in COVID-19 monitoring and prediction

Alberto G. GERLI ¹ ✉, Joan B. SORIANO ^{2, 3, 4}, Gianfranco ALICANDRO ^{5, 6}, Michele SALVAGNO ⁷, Fabio TACCONE ⁷, Stefano CENTANNI ⁸, Carlo LA VECCHIA ¹

¹ Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health, University of Milan, Milan, Italy; ² Unit of Pulmonology, Hospital Universitario de la Princesa, Madrid, Spain; ³ Faculty of Medicine, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain; ⁴ Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Respiratorias (CIBERES), Carlos III Health Institute, Madrid, Spain.; ⁵ Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan, Milan, Italy; ⁶ Cystic Fibrosis Center, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milan, Italy; ⁷ Department of Intensive Care, Erasme Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium; ⁸ Respiratory Unit, Department of Health Sciences, ASST Santi Paolo e Carlo, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedent impact of everyday life with deleterious consequences on global health, economics, and society. Thus, accurate and timely information is critical for monitoring its spread and mitigating its impact. ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot with artificial intelligence, developed by OpenAI, that can provide both textual content and R code for predictive models. It may prove to be useful in analyzing and interpreting COVID-19-related data.
METHODS: This paper explores the application of ChatGPT to the monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic, presenting R code for predictive models and demonstrating the model’s capabilities in sentiment analysis, information extraction, and predictive modelling. We used the prediction models suggested by ChatGPT to predict the daily number of COVID-19 deaths in Italy. The prediction accuracy of the models was compared using the following metrics: mean squared error (MSE), mean absolute deviation (MAD) and root mean squared error (RMSE).
RESULTS: ChatGPT suggested three different predictive models, including ARIMA, Random Forest and Prophet. The ARIMA model outperformed the other two models in predicting the daily number of COVID-19 deaths in Italy, with lower MSE, MAD, and RMSE values as compared to the Random Forest and Prophet.
CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrates the potential of ChatGPT as a valuable tool in the monitoring of the pandemic. By processing large amounts of data and providing relevant information, ChatGPT has the potential to provide accurate and timely insights, and support decision-making processes to mitigate the spread and impact of pandemics. The paper highlights the importance of exploring the capabilities of artificial intelligence in the management of public emergencies and provides a starting point for future research in this area.

KEY WORDS: COVID-19; Artificial intelligence; Public health; Pandemics