Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) medicine racially biased?

The power of artificial intelligence has transformed health care by using massive datasets to improve diagnostics, treatment, records management, and patient outcomes. Complex decisions that once took hours -- such as making a breast or lung cancer diagnosis based on imaging studies, or deciding when patients should be discharged -- are now resolved within seconds by machine learning and deep learning applications. Any technology, of course, will have its limitations and flaws. And over the past few years, a steady stream of evidence has demonstrated that some of these AI-powered medical technologies are replicating racial bias and exacerbating historic health care inequities. Now, amid the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, some researchers are asking whether these new technologies might be contributing to the disproportionately high rates of virus-related illness and death among African Americans. African Americans aged 35 to 44 experience Covid-19 mortality rates that are nine times higher than their White counterparts.