A Hippocratic Oath for your AI doctor
A broad new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) lays out ethical principles for the use of artificial intelligence in medicine.
Why it matters: Health is one of the most promising areas of expansion for AI, and the pandemic only accelerated the adoption of machine learning tools. But adding algorithms to health care will require that AI can follow the most basic rule of human medicine: "Do no harm" — and that won't be simple.
Driving the news: After nearly two years of consultations by international experts, the WHO report makes the case that the use of AI in medicine offers great promise for both rich and poorer countries, but "only if ethics and human rights are put at the heart of its design, deployment and use," the authors write.
Between the lines: The power of AI in health care is also its peril — the ability to rapidly process vast quantities of data and identify meaningful and actionable patterns far faster than human experts could.
