“I have to say as a doc sometimes: ‘Oh my, there’s this new stethoscope in my toolbox called a large language model, and it’s going to do a lot of amazing things.’ But it’s not going to replace doctors — I believe it’s a tool in the toolbox.”

This is Dr Karen DeSalvo, who as Google’s chief health officer, can be considered the real Dr Google.

As you would expect, on her visit to these shores this month she was talking about the bots that have generated acres of media coverage for their feats in answering medical exam questions.

But having trained as a physician in the US before eventually joining Google, Dr DeSalvo says she understands the limitations when it comes to real medicine.