AI’s coronavirus test | Politico

CEGA affiliated professor Ziad Obermyer speaks with Politico, explaining that because of the backward logic of algorithms used to prioritize COVID patients, Black patients end up being prioritized lower than healthier white patients.

“The Hope, the Hype, the Promise, the Peril. That’s the subtitle of a National Academy of Medicine report on health and artificial intelligence. And it’s a good starting point to size up how software, machine learning and complex algorithms are changing the medical system in the middle of a pandemic.

Everybody celebrates the hope and promise; if you google “Covid and AI” you get something like 2.7 million hits.

But it’s easy to gloss over the hype and the peril. If AI is built on data scaffolding that is tainted, flawed or distorted by systematic bias — or just the wrong starting points — those inequities will be baked in and perpetuated.

These topics are on our mind before POLITICO’s annual AI summit next week. It’s timely, when we so desperately need to make sense of things, when we so desperately need scientific breakthroughs — and when we so desperately need tools that will address inequities and foster trust.

The Hope, the Hype, the Promise, the Peril. That’s the subtitle of a National Academy of Medicine report on health and artificial intelligence. And it’s a good starting point to size up how software, machine learning and complex algorithms are changing the medical system in the middle of a pandemic.

Everybody celebrates the hope and promise; if you google “Covid and AI” you get something like 2.7 million hits.

But it’s easy to gloss over the hype and the peril. If AI is built on data scaffolding that is tainted, flawed or distorted by systematic bias — or just the wrong starting points — those inequities will be baked in and perpetuated.

These topics are on our mind before POLITICO’s annual AI summit next week. It’s timely, when we so desperately need to make sense of things, when we so desperately need scientific breakthroughs — and when we so desperately need tools that will address inequities and foster trust.”

Source: AI’s coronavirus test