But critics point out that all that promise could vanish if the rush to implement A.I. tramples patient privacy rights, overlooks biases and limitations, or fails to deploy services in a way that improves health outcomes for most people.
You could be forgiven for thinking that A.I. will soon replace human physicians based on headlines such as “The A.I. Doctor Will See You Now,” “Your Future Doctor May Not Be Human,” and “This A.I. Just Beat Human Doctors on a Clinical Exam.” But experts say the reality is more of a collaboration than an ousting: Patients could soon find their lives partly in the hands of A.I. services working alongside human clinicians.
There is no shortage of optimism about A.I. in the medical community. But many also caution the hype surrounding A.I. has yet to be realized in real clinical settings. There are also different visions for how A.I. services could make the biggest impact. And it’s still unclear whether A.I. will improve the lives of patients or just the bottom line for Silicon Valley companies, health care organizations, and insurers.
“I think that all our patients should actually want A.I. technologies to be brought to bear on weaknesses in the health care system, but we need to do it in a non-Silicon Valley hype way,” says Isaac Kohane, a biomedical informatics researcher at Harvard Medical School.
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