Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications
Publication Date
7-23-2024
Journal
Journal of Medical Ethics
DOI
10.1136/jme-2023-109338
PMID
37979976
PMCID
PMC11101592
PubMedCentral® Posted Date
7-23-2024
PubMedCentral® Full Text Version
Post-print
Published Open-Access
yes
Keywords
Humans, Trust, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Algorithms, Clinical Decision-Making, Female, Male, Adult, Middle Aged, Physicians, Decision Making, Ethics- Research, Quality of Health Care.
Abstract
Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in healthcare raise pressing questions about how much users should trust AI/ML systems, particularly for high stakes clinical decision-making. Ensuring that user trust is properly calibrated to a tool's computational capacities and limitations has both practical and ethical implications, given that overtrust or undertrust can influence over-reliance or under-reliance on algorithmic tools, with significant implications for patient safety and health outcomes. It is, thus, important to better understand how variability in trust criteria across stakeholders, settings, tools and use cases may influence approaches to using AI/ML tools in real settings. As part of a 5-year, multi-institutional Agency for Health Care Research and Quality-funded study, we identify trust criteria for a survival prediction algorithm intended to support clinical decision-making for left ventricular assist device therapy, using semistructured interviews (n=40) with patients and physicians, analysed via thematic analysis. Findings suggest that physicians and patients share similar empirical considerations for trust, which were primarily epistemic in nature, focused on accuracy and validity of AI/ML estimates. Trust evaluations considered the nature, integrity and relevance of training data rather than the computational nature of algorithms themselves, suggesting a need to distinguish 'source' from 'functional' explainability. To a lesser extent, trust criteria were also relational (endorsement from others) and sometimes based on personal beliefs and experience. We discuss implications for promoting appropriate and responsible trust calibration for clinical decision-making use AI/ML.