While people are growing more accustomed to AI-driven personal assistants, customer service chatbots and even financial advisors, when it comes to healthcare, most still want it with a human touch. Given that receiving healthcare is a deeply personal experience, it's understandable that patients prefer it to come from, well, a person. But with AI's vast potential to increase the quality, efficacy and efficiency of medicine, a push toward greater acceptance of artificial intelligence-driven medicine could unlock benefits for patients and providers.
How, then, can the industry help nudge the public to feel more comfortable with medical AI? According to a new study from researchers at Lehigh University and Seattle University, making the concept of bias more salient in their thinking can help. Study explores 'bias salience' The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, found that patients were more receptive to medical recommendations from AI when they were made more aware of the biases inherent in human healthcare decisions. This "bias salience," or making people more conscious of bias in decision-making, was shown to shift people's perceptions.
"This increased receptiveness to AI occurs because bias is perceived to be a fundamentally human shortcoming," said Rebecca J. H. Wang, associate professor of marketing in the Lehigh College of Business.
As such, when the prospect of bias is made salient, perceptions of AI integrity-;defined as the perceived fairness a.
