Artificial intelligence (AI) is something that more and more patients are relying on and looking to for information about their symptoms or conditions.
Not everybody trusts it. Not everybody loves it. Nor should they, given how new some of the uses for AI are. But it’s not too early to get to know more about how AI can play a helpful role in the provision of care.
Still, surveys conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago have found that trust levels of AI among the public relative to other sources still lags -- that could change.
About 1 in 5 U.S. adults trust AI health information roughly the same as information from family members, friends and employers, said Amelia Burke-Garcia, PhD, director of the Center for Health Communication Science at NORC. And 15% reported trusting AI just as much as their provider, while 6% of respondents reported trusting AI more than their own health care provider.
“These are still early days,” Burke-Garcia said. “AI is still new and it’s emerging. And we need to sort of be aware of some of these early trends in order for us to track this, because as it becomes more of our day-to-day lives, it’s going to be really important for us to consider how those statistics, those trends might change.”
AI tools can do a good job at helping to make sense of things that might feel overly complicated or digest a lot of information, she said.
Moreover, AI tools have an advantage over traditional search engines in the ability to ask follow-up questions, but Burke-Garcia said it’s still important to verify information.
“The caveat there would just be that I think these tools still get things wrong,” Burke-Garcia said. “A little bit of cross-checking and validating what (AI’s) giving back to you is important because it may not be 100% accurate.”