What Are the Risks Posed by AI In the Fields of Health and Fitness?

The growing availability of health-supportive AI technologies offers much to appreciate, but the developments are not without hidden costs or challenges, like these:

It’s a new tech to regulate.

The rapid application of AI in healthcare is already outpacing the regulations meant to ensure its safety and fairness. Federal agencies were designed to regulate static developments (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates drugs and medical ­devices, for example), but they may not have the ­expertise or processes in place to evaluate dynamic technologies like the algorithms that are central to AI.

Algorithms are validated on certain training datasets, but many adapt to new inputs after they’ve been deployed, notes pathologist Taofic Mounajjed, MD. In other words, they’re constantly shape-shifting. “How nimble are the regulatory bodies going to be in evaluating them if they’re continuously evolving?” he asks.

Data can be biased.

AI models are often trained on datasets that represent limited, homogeneous populations. In an article in the journal Science, researchers describe how an AI system widely used in U.S. healthcare underestimated the health needs of Black patients compared with white patients who had similar conditions. The training data was based on healthcare spending rather than actual health status, so it reflected systemic racial disparities in access to care.

Data privacy is difficult to maintain.

AI systems collect vast amounts of personal health data, often from wearables, medical records, and even social media interactions. Users may not fully understand how their data is being used, who has access to it, or whether it’s being shared with third parties.

AI has a substantial environmental impact.

Large-scale AI models require massive computational power, contributing to high energy consumption. And data centers that power AI systems require lots of water for cooling: According to one study, a single ChatGPT prompt for a 100-word email uses the approximate equivalent of a standard bottle of water.