When AI Runs the NHS

Imagine the NHS begins using AI to help manage waiting lists and drug allocations.

To great fanfare, we are told this will save the UK taxpayer over £150m a year.

Good news? It depends.

Let's say the service provider is from the US and the software it uses was designed using US healthcare data.

The algorithm underpinning it's decision making has learned that elderly patients and those with chronic conditions generate poor 'return on investment’ for healthcare insurance companies.

This means your Grandma gets pushed down the list because she doesn't have so many healthy years to live and your friend with diabetes waits for much longer than before because he is seen as a future cost drain.

Now you might be thinking that a) hard choices like this are needed in healthcare and/or b) surely they wouldn’t just import a US system like that.

Fair enough, except a) what if it’s your partner or child at the bottom of the list and b) don’t be so sure!

The government likes to talk a lot about ‘Sovereign AI’ but it seems unnervingly willing to hand power over our lives to foreign companies.

Right now the UK does not appear to be approaching AI in a way that:

* Guarantees the future independence of UK critical national infrastructure if geopolitical circumstances change
* Offers people the chance to have a meaningful say about AI systems that make big decisions about our lives

I think this is really important.

It isn't hypothetical. The US administration's new AI plan explicitly seeks to export its values through technology.

If power is going to be handed over slowly from humans to machines then we need greater oversight of AI systems than our current system allows for.

Otherwise we create more democratic deficits that will deepen mistrust of institutions.

The UK does need to invest in its technology infrastructure.

But if the price is a loss of democratic control to faceless unaccountable foreign owned technologies then it’s not worth paying.

(Sharing a link here to a joint article from The Sycamore Collective which is working together on this and related issues.)

https://lnkd.in/e5XEYUPd