There is significant discomfort among Americans with the idea of artificial intelligence (AI) being used in their own healthcare for issues such as screening for skin cancer and monitoring a patient’s vital signs, according to a new Pew Research Center survey exploring public views on AI in health and medicine.
The survey found that six-in-10 US adults say they would feel uncomfortable if their own health care provider relied on artificial intelligence to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments; a significantly smaller share (39%) say they would feel comfortable with this. One factor in these views: A majority of the public is unconvinced that the use of AI in health and medicine would improve health outcomes.
The report, based on a survey of 11 004 US adults conducted using the centre’s American Trends Panel, finds 38% say AI being used to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments would lead to better health outcomes for patients generally, while 33% say it would lead to worse outcomes, and 27% say it wouldn’t make much difference.
Asked in more detail about how the use of artificial intelligence would impact health and medicine, Americans identify a mix of both positives and negatives. On the positive side, a larger share of Americans think the use of AI in health and medicine would reduce rather than increase the number of mistakes made by health care providers (40% versus 27%). And among the majority of Americans who see a problem with racial and ethnic bias in health care, a much larger share say the problem of bias and unfair treatment would get better (51%) than worse (15%) if AI was used more to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments for patients.
But there is wide concern about AI’s potential impact on the personal connection between a patient and health care provider: 57% say the use of artificial intelligence to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments would make the patient-provider relationship worse. Only 13% say it would be better. The security of health records is also a source of some concern for Americans: 37% think using AI in health and medicine would make the security of patients’ records worse, compared with 22% who think it would improve security.
These findings come as public attitudes toward AI continue to take shape, amid the ongoing adoption of AI technologies across industries and the accompanying national conversation about the benefits and risks that AI applications present for society.
“The burgeoning role of AI in health and medicine raises new questions about how well current practices are working and what impact AI applications can have,” says Cary Funk, director of science and society research at Pew Research Center. “At this still early stage, we find Americans largely cautious about the use of AI in their own care even as they tilt toward optimism that AI could reduce medical errors or support equitable treatment of patients.”
Caution remains a dominant theme in public views about use of AI in health care. Three-quarters of Americans say their greater concern is that health care providers will move too fast implementing AI in health and medicine before fully understanding the risks for patients; far fewer (23%), say they are more concerned that providers will move too slowly, missing opportunities to improve patients’ health.
Other key findings include:
On balance, Americans who see bias based on race or ethnicity as a problem in health and medicine think AI has potential to improve the situation.
Among the majority of the public that considers bias and unfair treatment in health and medicine based on a patient’s race or ethnicity to be a problem, the predominant view is that the use of AI to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments would help reduce it. This outlook is shared across racial and ethnic groups.
Among those who see a problem with bias in health and medicine, larger shares think the use of AI would make this issue better than worse among White (54% versus 12%), Hispanic (50% versus 19%) and English-speaking Asian (58% versus 15%) adults. Views among Black adults also lean in a more positive than negative direction, but by a smaller margin (40% versus 25%). Roughly a quarter to a third of each group says bias and unfair treatment would stay about the same.
The predominant explanation respondents gave for the view that the use of AI would reduce bias and unfair treatment centred around the idea that AI would lead to data-driven, systematic judgments without being influenced by a patient’s characteristics. Those who said, instead, that the use of AI in health care would worsen the issue or have little effect on the degree of bias and unfair treatment, often pointed to the idea that human biases underlie the programming that drives AI or that, in the end, human judgment and biases would still be part of medical care decisions.
Americans express caution about the use of AI for surgery, pain treatment recommendations, and mental health support, but are more open to using AI for skin cancer screening.
About six-in-10 Americans (59%) say they would not want AI-driven robots that can perform parts of surgery used in their own care, even as a majority considers this to be an advance for medicine. Americans are similarly cautious about the use of AI applications guiding their treatment for pain management following surgery.
Americans are especially negative about the possibility of using an AI chatbot if they were seeking mental health support (79% say they would not want this). Of the four specific AI applications asked about on the survey, only one garnered enthusiasm: 65% of Americans say they would want to use AI-based skin cancer detection in their own care, and a majority (55%) thinks this technology would improve the accuracy of skin cancer diagnoses.
Men, those with higher levels of education, and younger adults, are more open to the use of AI in their own health care.
Among men, 46% say they would be comfortable with their health care provider relying on AI to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments, compared with 33% of women who say the same. Those with higher levels of education and income, as well as younger adults, are also more open to AI in their own health care than other groups.
Still, in all cases, about half or more express discomfort with their own health care provider relying on AI.