A 10-year-old CNN outperforms frontier LLMs for skin cancer diagnosis
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Surprising research showing older CNN outperforms LLMs for medical diagnosis, highly novel and strategic for AI model selection.
This is a melanoma. Figure 1. Invasive melanoma on the ear, under 0.8 mm thick. Both LLMs called it a seborrhoeic keratosis and said it could be discharged. The CNN called it a melanoma. Clinical photograph on the left, dermoscopic image on the right. Images: MILK10k , MILK study team, CC BY-NC. I showed these two images - a clinical photograph and a dermoscopic (skin microscope) image - to GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1, two of the most capable AI models available in October 2026. Both said it was a seborrhoeic keratosis, a harmless warty growth, and that the patient could be discharged. Iā¦