Paper ID: 2409.18968

Safety challenges of AI in medicine

Xiaoye Wang, Nicole Xi Zhang, Hongyu He, Trang Nguyen, Kun-Hsing Yu, Hao Deng, Cynthia Brandt, Danielle S. Bitterman, Ling Pan, Ching-Yu Cheng, James Zou, Dianbo Liu

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in deep learning and large language models (LLMs), have accelerated their integration into medicine. However, these developments have also raised public concerns about the safe application of AI. In healthcare, these concerns are especially pertinent, as the ethical and secure deployment of AI is crucial for protecting patient health and privacy. This review examines potential risks in AI practices that may compromise safety in medicine, including reduced performance across diverse populations, inconsistent operational stability, the need for high-quality data for effective model tuning, and the risk of data breaches during model development and deployment. For medical practitioners, patients, and researchers, LLMs provide a convenient way to interact with AI and data through language. However, their emergence has also amplified safety concerns, particularly due to issues like hallucination. Second part of this article explores safety issues specific to LLMs in medical contexts, including limitations in processing complex logic, challenges in aligning AI objectives with human values, the illusion of understanding, and concerns about diversity. Thoughtful development of safe AI could accelerate its adoption in real-world medical settings.

Submitted: Sep 11, 2024