Large language models (LLMs) have broad medical knowledge and can reason about medical information across many domains, holding promising potential for diverse medical applications in the near future. In this study, we demonstrate a concerning vulnerability of LLMs in medicine. Through targeted manipulation of just 1.1% of the model's weights, we can deliberately inject an incorrect biomedical fact. The erroneous information is then propagated in the model's output, whilst its performance on other biomedical tasks remains intact. We validate our findings in a set of 1,038 incorrect biomedical facts. This peculiar susceptibility raises serious security and trustworthiness concerns for the application of LLMs in healthcare settings. It accentuates the need for robust protective measures, thorough verification mechanisms, and stringent management of access to these models, ensuring their reliable and safe use in medical practice.
@article{arxiv.2309.17007,
title = {Medical Foundation Models are Susceptible to Targeted Misinformation Attacks},
author = {Tianyu Han and Sven Nebelung and Firas Khader and Tianci Wang and Gustav Mueller-Franzes and Christiane Kuhl and Sebastian Försch and Jens Kleesiek and Christoph Haarburger and Keno K. Bressem and Jakob Nikolas Kather and Daniel Truhn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.17007},
year = {2023}
}