World Health Organization warns of use of artificial intelligence

In particular, the increasing prevalence of productive artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT has begun to affect some industries deeply. In addition, the “hallucination” problem of these AI tools causes the production of false information. In this context, the World Health Organization (WHO), in a statement today, called for caution in the use of artificial intelligence for public health services.

WHO worried about artificial intelligence

WHO is not shy about stating that it is enthusiastic about the potential of artificial intelligence. But the Organization said it had concerns about how to use artificial intelligence to improve access to health information, as a decision support tool, and to improve the diagnostic process.

In its statement, WHO underlines that the data used to train artificial intelligence may be biased. In the light of these data, it is stated that artificial intelligence can produce misleading or false information and models can be abused to produce disinformation. On the other hand, the UN health agency said it was “mandatory” to assess the risks of using established large language model tools (LLM) such as ChatGPT to protect human well-being and public health.

In fact, the WHO and the UN’s health branch are perfectly justified in their concerns. It’s a well-known fact that current productive AI tools are prone to “hallucination,” that is, to make things up. For this reason, it is possible for these tools to give false information, as well as giving false information.