SPOTLIGHT ON: Artificial Intelligence
INTERVIEW: Engineering Empathy in the age of AI
This month, we speak with Johanna Skilling, Executive Vice President of Strategy at Burson, Cohn Wolff on the impact and future of machine learning on health and behaviour change. Like your FitBit that tells you when to move, sleep and decompress, AI is starting to play a bigger role in patient care, in mental health diagnosis and through supportive nudges to follow health behaviours. And now, with tech that can pick up on patterns in our speech, eye movements, and expressions, machines can be programmed for empathy. AI could just spark the next revolution in behavioural science.
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At the best of times, our health care is in the hands of rushed, overworked, multi-tasking doctors and nurses. Of the predicted shortage of nearly 18 million health workers by 2018, the largest needs will be in Southeast Asia (6.9 million) and Africa (4.2 million), all in the backdrop of an increasingly complex global health context.
Now imagine a doctor whose new companion is a machine that can scour databases of symptoms, personal history, research, test results and more in seconds. Cardiologist, and author of Deep Medicine, Eric Topol, believes that AI can save healthcare professionals valuable time to focus on the patient, bringing empathy and human interaction back to health care. In an emergency context, a few extra seconds can save lives. In a developing country , he says, AI may democratize health care by providing equal access to the mountains of data, research and studies, providing the latest thinking on challenges to human health.
But AI is big data, and thus only as good as the information that goes in, and the algorithms which process it. AI's "white guy problem" and the possibility of ingrained bias is something we all need to think about. Unless the technology is used by developed and developing countries alike, AI has the potential to widen disparities and inequality. But fear not, AI can help solve this problem, too. A recent working paper authored by Sunstein and Mullainathan among others, argues that algorithms can help expose inherent and unconscious bias of its creators.
So you're not out of a job just yet! AI will increasingly be part of how we work and how we think about reaching people and influencing positive behaviour. Whether or not your next doctor’s visit will include a robot with good bedside manner, is still up for debate. Watch this space.
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