AI's role in life & death decisions
Should AI in health care make life-or-death decisions? AI-triage systems are already being tested worldwide. Here are the pros and cons!
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00:00 Would you like AI to help decide on your cancer treatment?
00:04 How do you feel about AI triage, meaning AI deciding who gets treated first in the emergency room?
00:11 Well, AI triage systems are already being tested in hospitals.
00:15 They are also being tried out in medical practices to help find the best possible treatment.
00:20 What are the benefits and what are the risks?
00:23 Let's start with medical diagnosis from CHAT-GPT.
00:28 Check out this interesting experiment by scientists at Cambridge University in the UK.
00:34 They tested the knowledge of doctors at different stages of their career against CHAT-GPT-4.
00:40 The AI was first trained with about 400 questions on eye disorders or ophthalmology.
00:46 Next, CHAT-GPT-4 was subjected to a mock exam.
00:50 The AI was right in 69% of cases.
00:53 It was outscored only by expert ophthalmologists.
00:57 But it outperformed ophthalmology trainees and junior general doctors.
01:02 Well, these results are not representative.
01:05 There were only a handful of participants.
01:07 But this experiment can give you an idea of the potential advantages of AI in the medical sector.
01:14 AI triage has been studied by top institutes like Johns Hopkins University in the US and Augsburg University in Germany.
01:22 Here's a look at the findings.
01:24 Medical AI can boost diagnosis efficiency and speed.
01:29 It can process huge amounts of information very quickly.
01:32 Powered by advanced algorithms and machine learning, AI quickly assesses the severity of a patient's condition and determines who needs a doctor first.
01:42 And AI is a multitasker.
01:45 It can not only process large volumes of diverse patient data quickly.
01:49 Many AI systems can complete various tasks at the same time, like assessing resources for surgery.
01:56 Very helpful when time is of the essence.
01:59 Last but not least, unlike us humans, AI triage systems can operate around the clock.
02:05 They can provide continuous support and reduce the workload for healthcare professionals.
02:10 Sounds great, but what are the limitations?
02:13 First, us humans often don't trust AI.
02:17 That goes for patients and healthcare professionals alike.
02:20 How does the algorithm make decisions?
02:23 That is often a bit of a black box to us.
02:25 It's difficult to understand how AI reaches certain conclusions.
02:30 This lack of transparency can lead to a lack of trust and ethical concerns about following the AI's advice.
02:37 Apart from that, AI wouldn't make a good general practitioner.
02:41 AI systems at the moment are highly specialized, meaning an AI trained with data on cancer treatment is not fit to give general advice in an emergency room.
02:51 Plus, whereas a doctor notices multiple factors about a patient during an examination, the AI only works with the data it was given.
03:01 That means AI is not as good as a doctor when it comes to combining information on health conditions with those on a patient's personal life.
03:09 Finally, AI triage systems can only be as good as the data they're trained on.
03:15 Let's suppose a system was primarily trained on health data of white males aged 35 to 50.
03:22 The AI would not be suitable for anyone else.
03:25 So, developers carry the responsibility of creating diverse and truly representative data sets.
03:32 To be clear, AI triage systems are not meant to make any decisions on life or death on their own.
03:39 They are meant as tools to assist doctors.
03:42 And as such, they can be of great help for medical professionals, as patients could benefit a great deal from AI
03:49 if the data sets are comprehensive, if developers train the algorithms to take multiple factors into account, and if doctors are trained to use AI responsibly.
04:00 That's it from me. Bye bye.
04:02 [Music]