The skill of health professionals performing colonoscopies was significantly undermined by having routine assistance from artificial intelligence, a study of 1,400 patients in Poland has found.
The rate at which endoscopists detected precancerous growths in the colon without help from AI fell from 28.4 per cent to 22.4 per cent after their hospitals introduced AI assistance, according to the study published on Tuesday in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The detection rate in AI-assisted colonoscopies was 25.3 per cent.
“Our results are concerning, given that the adoption of AI in medicine is rapidly spreading,” said Marcin Romańczyk of the Academy of Silesia, one of the researchers. “To our knowledge this is the first study to suggest a negative impact of regular AI use on healthcare professionals’ ability to complete a patient-relevant task in medicine.”