CITATION: Bull World Health Organ. 2023 Jun 1; 101(6): 364–364A.
Published online 2023 Jun 1. doi: 10.2471/BLT.23.290215
PMCID: PMC10225938
Artificial intelligence for global health: cautious optimism with safeguards
Sameer Pujari et al.
SELECTED EXTRACTS
The United Nations Secretary-General has stated that the safe deployment of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, can help the world to achieve the sustainable development goals.
The rapid diffusion and growing number of applications of artificial intelligence large language models has generated excitement and public discourse around their potential to improve human health. However, this enthusiasm has been accompanied by concerns that such content-generative systems may be biased, produce misleading or inaccurate information, and could relinquish data privacy and ownership controls to technology firms looking to commercialize large language models and commodify data...
Artificial intelligence tools are increasingly being applied to public health priorities...
A multiagency global initiative on artificial intelligence for health is warranted to improve coordination, leverage collective and individual agency capacity, and ensure that the evolution of artificial intelligence steers away from a dystopian future towards one that is safe, secure, trustworthy and equitable.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
