对比了14种模型在新冠肺部X光诊断中的准确率与碳排放,发现小模型更环保但易误判。
Analysing Environmental Efficiency in AI for X-Ray Diagnosis
- 用小判别模型和轻量LLM构建Mendix应用,测试不同组合的诊断效果
- 小模型碳足迹降低94.2%,但诊断偏向阳性且置信度低;最高效的是Covid-Net,准确率95.5%
- 警示:生成式模型不适合分类任务,盲目使用会带来巨大环境代价
AI在医疗诊断中的应用旨在提升效率,但大型语言模型(如ChatGPT、Claude)因其通用性和接口便利性被广泛采用,引发环境影响担忧。本文将大模型与小型判别模型集成至Mendix应用中,用于检测胸部X光片中的新冠肺炎。判别模型还作为知识库供大模型调用以提升准确性。本研究对14种模型配置进行了诊断准确率与环境影响的基准比较。结果表明:虽小模型显著降低碳足迹,但输出倾向阳性,概率置信度不足;限制大模型仅输出概率导致准确率与碳排放表现均差。使用轻量级GPT-4.1-Nano使碳足迹比大模型降低94.2%,但仍远高于判别模型;最优方案为Covid-Net模型,其碳足迹较GPT-4.5-Preview减少99.9%,同时达到95.5%最高准确率。该研究揭示了生成式与判别式模型在分类任务中的效能差异及环境风险。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The integration of AI tools into medical applications has aimed to improve the efficiency of diagnosis. The emergence of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT and Claude, has expanded this integration even further despite a concern for their environmental impact. Because of LLM versatility and ease of use through APIs, these larger models are often utilised even though smaller, custom models can be used instead. In this paper, LLMs and small discriminative models are integrated into a Mendix application to detect Covid-19 in chest X-rays. These discriminative models are also used to provide knowledge bases for LLMs to improve accuracy. This provides a benchmark study of 14 different model configurations for comparison of diagnostic accuracy and environmental impact. The findings indicated that while smaller models reduced the carbon footprint of the application, the output was biased towards a positive diagnosis and the output probabilities were lacking confidence. Meanwhile, restricting LLMs to only give probabilistic output caused poor performance in both accuracy and carbon footprint, demonstrating the risk of using LLMs as a universal AI solution. While using the smaller LLM GPT-4.1-Nano reduced the carbon footprint by 94.2% compared to the larger models, this was still disproportionate to the discriminative models; the most efficient solution was the Covid-Net model. Although it had a larger carbon footprint than other small models, its carbon footprint was 99.9% less than when using GPT-4.5-Preview, whilst achieving an accuracy of 95.5%, the highest of all models examined. This paper contributes to knowledge by comparing generative and discriminative models in Covid-19 detection as well as highlighting the environmental risk of using generative tools for classification tasks.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。