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“By far, the greatest danger of artificial intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.”-Eliezer Yudkowsky1
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the way we work and live with an exponential increase in the integration of AI components into products and processes around us. It is rapidly making its way in every possible sector, affecting us directly or indirectly. In fact, a recent Whitepaper by the UK government noted that AI could go on to have as much impact on human life as electricity or the internet (Gov.UK, 2023).
AI technologies have the potential to transform healthcare and, in recent years, the abilities of AI to augment those of clinicians have been repeatedly and emphatically demonstrated in many medical domains. However, the current state and nature of the technology has raised several concerns about safety and ethicality of AI. The exponential growth of AI-powered tools has even prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to warn about the need to demonstrate evidence-based benefits before services are offered to patients and consumers as they may come with long-term risks (WHO, 2023)
Since AI technology involves some level of autonomy in the software, there is apprehension that unless it is aligned with fundamental human values, it can have unintended and grave consequences. Oversight, domain-specific standards and active regulation are critical for the utilization of the full potential of AI in healthcare. However, existing policies for the regulation of AI are general in nature; they do not consider the sensitivities, specificities, and risks of AI in the healthcare domain.
Technological progress always comes with new and significant challenges. Some of these challenges are tied to the technical properties of AI, others relate to the legal, medical, and social perspectives, making it necessary to adopt an integrative approach.
This paper, using a multi-disciplinary perspective, explores the limitations of AI, and makes a case for the need of standards and regulation for its safe, effective and ethical use in healthcare. The first section introduces AI and its applications in healthcare. The following section with some illustrations reflects upon the various issues emerging from the use of AI in healthcare. The need for standards and the challenges related to regulation of AI are discussed in the final section.
TopSection One
The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly taking hold across global business, according to a Global Survey (McKinsey & Co, 2018). This is thanks, in large part, to the availability of data on almost every aspect of life and exponential increase in computational power, as also advances in AI technology (Figure 1), which have made it possible to process large amounts of data from which actionable information can be produced (Turner Lee, 2019). The global AI market size was valued at USD 136.55 billion in 2022 and is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.3% from 2023 to 2030. AI in healthcare is projected to grow from USD 14.6 bn (2023) to USD 102.7 bn by 2028, at a CAGR of 47.6%. The availability of big data and the demand to reduce healthcare costs are expected to be the major drivers for its growth (Markets and Markets, 2023).
Figure 1. Annual global patent filings for AI technologies