The World Health Organization has cautioned against using language models produced by artificial intelligence without careful consideration of the potential risks.
While these tools can improve access to health information and aid in diagnosis, the WHO stresses the importance of protecting human well-being, safety, autonomy, and public health.
Their advice is particularly important in settings with limited resources where the use of LLMs may exacerbate existing inequalities.
“While WHO is enthusiastic about the appropriate use of technologies, including LLMs, to support health-care professionals, patients, researchers and scientists, there is concern that caution that would normally be exercised for any new technology is not being exercised consistently with LLMs. This includes widespread adherence to key values of transparency, inclusion, public engagement, expert supervision, and rigorous evaluation.
“Precipitous adoption of untested systems could lead to errors by health-care workers, cause harm to patients, erode trust in AI and thereby undermine (or delay) the potential long-term benefits and uses of such technologies around the world,” it said.
Other concerns according to the WHO are that LLMs may be trained on data for which consent may not have been previously provided for such use, and LLMs may not protect sensitive data (including health data) that a user provides to an application to generate a response; and LLMs can be misused to generate and disseminate highly convincing disinformation in the form of text, audio or video content that is difficult for the public to differentiate from reliable health content.
WHO recommends that policymakers ensure patient safety and protection while technology firms work to commercialise LLMs.
WHO proposes that these concerns be addressed, and clear evidence of benefit be measured before their widespread use in routine health care and medicine – whether by individuals, care providers, or health system administrators and policy-makers.
WHO reiterates the importance of applying ethical principles and appropriate governance, as enumerated in the WHO guidance on the ethics and governance of AI for health, when designing, developing, and deploying AI for health.
