Public vs physician views of liability for artificial intelligence in health care.

Journal: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA
Published Date:

Abstract

The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care has raised questions about who should be held liable for medical errors that result from care delivered jointly by physicians and algorithms. In this survey study comparing views of physicians and the U.S. public, we find that the public is significantly more likely to believe that physicians should be held responsible when an error occurs during care delivered with medical AI, though the majority of both physicians and the public hold this view (66.0% vs 57.3%; P = .020). Physicians are more likely than the public to believe that vendors (43.8% vs 32.9%; P = .004) and healthcare organizations should be liable for AI-related medical errors (29.2% vs 22.6%; P = .05). Views of medical liability did not differ by clinical specialty. Among the general public, younger people are more likely to hold nearly all parties liable.

Authors

  • Dhruv Khullar
    Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, New York.
  • Lawrence P Casalino
    Division of Health Policy and Economics, Department of Population Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, USA.
  • Yuting Qian
    Division of Health Policy and Economics, Department of Population Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, USA.
  • Yuan Lu
    Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
  • Enoch Chang
    Yale Department of Therapeutic Radiology, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
  • Sanjay Aneja
    Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.