Performance of ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 in the Taiwan National Pharmacist Licensing Examination: Comparative Evaluation Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: OpenAI released versions ChatGPT-3.5 and GPT-4 between 2022 and 2023. GPT-3.5 has demonstrated proficiency in various examinations, particularly the United States Medical Licensing Examination. However, GPT-4 has more advanced capabilities. Objective: This study aims to examine the efficacy of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 within the Taiwan National Pharmacist Licensing Examination and to ascertain their utility and potential application in clinical pharmacy and education. Methods: The pharmacist examination in Taiwan consists of 2 stages: basic subjects and clinical subjects. In this study, exam questions were manually fed into the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models, and their responses were recorded; graphic-based questions were excluded. This study encompassed three steps: (1) determining the answering accuracy of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, (2) categorizing question types and observing differences in model performance across these categories, and (3) comparing model performance on calculation and situational questions. Microsoft Excel and R software were used for statistical analyses. Results: GPT-4 achieved an accuracy rate of 72.9%, overshadowing GPT-3.5, which achieved 59.1% (P<.001). In the basic subjects category, GPT-4 significantly outperformed GPT-3.5 (73.4% vs 53.2%; P<.001). However, in clinical subjects, only minor differences in accuracy were observed. Specifically, GPT-4 outperformed GPT-3.5 in the calculation and situational questions. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that GPT-4 outperforms GPT-3.5 in the Taiwan National Pharmacist Licensing Examination, particularly in basic subjects. While GPT-4 shows potential for use in clinical practice and pharmacy education, its limitations warrant caution. Future research should focus on refining prompts, improving model stability, integrating medical databases, and designing questions that better assess student competence and minimize guessing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.051 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".