# Language Models And A Second Opinion Use Case: The Pocket Professional

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.20636 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20636/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [JMLR: Joint Medical LLM and Retrieval Training for Enhancing Reasoning and Professional Question Answering Capability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17887/) (2024)
- [Evaluation of ChatGPT-Generated Medical Responses: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08410/) (2023)
- [Can LLMs Correct Physicians, Yet? Investigating Effective Interaction Methods in the Medical Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20288/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Who Does What? Archetypes of Roles Assigned to LLMs During Human-AI Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11924/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This research tests the role of Large Language Models (LLMs) as formal second opinion tools in professional decision-making, particularly focusing on complex medical cases where even experienced physicians seek peer consultation. The work analyzed 183 challenging medical cases from Medscape over a 20-month period, testing multiple LLMs' performance against crowd-sourced physician responses. A key finding was the high overall score possible in the latest foundational models (>80% accuracy compared to consensus opinion), which exceeds most human metrics reported on the same clinical cases (450 pages of patient profiles, test results). The study rates the LLMs' performance disparity between straightforward cases (>81% accuracy) and complex scenarios (43% accuracy), particularly in these cases generating substantial debate among human physicians. The research demonstrates that LLMs may be valuable as generators of comprehensive differential diagnoses rather than as primary diagnostic tools, potentially helping to counter cognitive biases in clinical decision-making, reduce cognitive loads, and thus remove some sources of medical error. The inclusion of a second comparative legal dataset (Supreme Court cases, N=21) provides added empirical context to the AI use to foster second opinions, though these legal challenges proved considerably easier for LLMs to analyze. In addition to the original contributions of empirical evidence for LLM accuracy, the research aggregated a novel benchmark for others to score highly contested question and answer reliability between both LLMs and disagreeing human practitioners. These results suggest that the optimal deployment of LLMs in professional settings may differ substantially from current approaches that emphasize automation of routine tasks.