Artificial intelligence in medicine: the influence of medical expertise and perceived causability on medical AI risk and benefit perception

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in medicine, making it one of the largest and fastest-growing fields in which AI is applied. While some AI-based applications are already outperforming experts regarding diagnostic accuracy, patients’ trust in AI is still comparatively low. Given the tremendous potential of medical AI applications, understanding what influences patients’ and doctors’ perceptions of medical AI is of utmost importance. To this end, we assessed for N = 750 participants (N = 684 laypeople and N = 66 medical experts) whether medical expertise and perceived causability, that is the transparency, efficiency, and satisfaction with which the AI is perceived, are related to the perception of risks and benefits in three different medical AI scenarios. Benefit perception increased with higher perceived causability but was unrelated to medical expertise. On the other hand, risk perception increased with higher medical expertise and decreased with higher perceived causability. Therefore, when introducing and using medical AI applications in the treatment of patients, it is essential to sensitize both patients and medical experts to the different perceptions. Such measures can be an important prerequisite for increasing AI acceptance in medicine.