Comparing Vision-Capable Models, GPT-4 and Gemini, With GPT-3.5 on Taiwan’s Pulmonologist Exam

Introduction The latest generation of large language models (LLMs) features multimodal capabilities, allowing them to interpret graphics, images, and videos, which are crucial in medical fields. This study investigates the vision capabilities of the next-generation Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) and Google's Gemini. Methods To establish a comparative baseline, we used GPT-3.5, a model limited to text processing, and evaluated the performance of both GPT-4 and Gemini on questions from the Taiwan Specialist Board Exams in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. Our dataset included 1,100 questions from 2012 to 2023, with 100 questions per year. Of these, 1,059 were in pure text and 41 were text with images, with the majority in a non-English language and only six in pure English. Results For each annual exam consisting of 100 questions from 2013 to 2023, GPT-4 achieved scores of 66, 69, 51, 64, 72, 64, 66, 64, 63, 68, and 67, respectively. Gemini scored 45, 48, 45, 45, 46, 59, 54, 41, 53, 45, and 45, while GPT-3.5 scored 39, 33, 35, 36, 32, 33, 43, 28, 32, 33, and 36. Conclusions These results demonstrate that the newer LLMs with vision capabilities significantly outperform the text-only model. When a passing score of 60 was set, GPT-4 passed most exams and approached human performance.