My mom and Dr. DeepSeek.

Dr. Melanie Hoenig, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and nephrologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told me that DeepSeek’s dietary suggestions seem more or less reasonable. But she said DeepSeek had suggested completely wrong blood tests and mixed up my mother’s original diagnosis with another very rare kidney disease.

But still:

“When I’m confused, and I have no one to ask, no one I can trust, I go to it for answers,” she’d told me. “I don’t have to spend money. I don’t have to wait in line. I don’t have to do anything.”

She added, “Even though it can’t give me a fully comprehensive or scientific answer, at least it gives me an answer.”