Who pays the bills when AI kills?
This article originally appeared in The Hill on July 20, 2023.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing many aspects of our life, including such critical areas as health care. Not only is AI providing more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments, it also is making quality care more accessible to rural patients.
But as AI is increasingly becoming more pervasive, it is posing unique challenges in determining who bears the responsibility when AI systems cause harm.
Modern AI systems are based on statistical methods. As providers increasingly rely on AI to make critical decisions, their statistical nature guarantees that certain AI systems will not perform as intended on some occasions, leading to more and more AI-related disputes. So the question of who pays when something goes wrong dominates much of the debate around AI in medicine as well as other industries.
The concept of “wrong” ranges from physical harm to privacy violations to biases that can be more easily perpetuated by AI throughout social media platforms.
