I spend my evenings decompressing.
Patient care does take a toll on me and I have my handful of ways to decompress and avoid burn-out: mountain biking, hiking, playing guitar are among my favorite go-to’s. One of my newer hobbies is playing around with AI. I find AI fascinating. I love trying to find ways to break it.
I got a notification from Grok (my AI of choice) saying it has a new feature: all you have to do is type in any topic and it will give you an endless scrollable stream of images… images that are being created on the fly by the AI engine.
So of course, I type in “chiropractic” to see what comes up. Here are some of the more amusing results:
These were the good ones that made me laugh. However, most of the images consisted of one person putting a loving choke hold on the other person while lying on a table.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED
Look… AI is not true AI… meaning… it is not intelligent. It is pulling information from the internet and birthing what it determines to be the best, most accurate response.
What have we learned by these images? Well, we know that AI has no idea what chiropractic is or what a chiropractic adjustment looks like. Why? Because the information available to develop a response was either missing, incomplete or inaccurate.
BAD NEWS
It’s clear there is not a lot of clear, consistent information on the internet about chiropractic… what it is… how it’s done… what it accomplishes… and so forth. Why is that? Well, I can think of few things in existence that are less understood than chiropractic. Outer space. Quantum physics. How to plug in a USB cable on the first try.
Chiropractic has been clumped in with back pain relief care like Tylenol, heating pads and late-night infomercial back-pain devices endorsed by your favorite retired athlete. Just not true.
Part of the problem is most of our profession’s desire to fit into the status quo medical community when we clearly don’t.
Part of the problem is chiropractors, as a profession, not having the nerve to stand up and tell their patients what chiropractic is… or even mentioning the word subluxation. “Subluxation” is being erased from chiropractic school curriculum because it doesn’t fit the medical model and insurance doesn’t pay to correct a subluxation.
Long story short: chiropractic is difficult to put into words. There is some incredibly complex physiology happening underneath the hood, but it’s not something that is easily communicated to patients.
Therefore, we have a lack of clear, concise information available explaining what chiropractic is, what it accomplishes and what it does for you as a patient.
GOOD NEWS
The good news is, no chance Grok, or ChatGPT will take my job any time soon. I can rest easier at night.
THE TAKE HOME
There are some things that are difficult to communicate.
I tried a few others with Grok. I asked Grok “what is love?” and the response was…
… wait for it …
Nothing. Literally got no response. Grok just continued cranking away trying to figure it out.
Some things are tough to communicate.
Chiropractic is one of them.
I do my absolute best to try and communicate chiropractic to my patients but to be honest… the best way to understand it is to experience it.
When you know, you know.