From Avril Danczak, Manchester, UK
Chelsea Whyte reports that an artificial intelligence system can diagnose childhood illnesses better than some doctors (16 February, p 19). Then we read that it is less effective than senior doctors. This makes it unsuitable for triage – deciding patients’ priority for treatment – which should be done by the most senior clinicians, who are more alert to unusual or subtle warning signs.
The AI “learns” from medical records written by skilled paediatricians and marked up by others to identify portions linked to a person’s complaint. It is recognising patterns of human intelligence in records using information humans have preselected, recorded and interpreted, not symptoms from examining sick children. I would not trust this AI with my child.
