Google’s Hospital AI Model Draws Questions From Sen. Warner (1)

Sen. Mark Warner challenged Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai to address concerns about risks related to a too-rapid rollout of AI models like the search giant’s Med-PaLM 2.

Artificial intelligence “undoubtedly holds tremendous potential to improve patient care and health outcomes,” Warner (D-Va.) wrote Tuesday, expressing concern that “premature deployment of unproven technology could lead to the erosion of trust in our medical professionals and institutions, the exacerbation of existing racial disparities in health outcomes, and an increased risk of diagnostic and care-delivery errors.”

Med-PaLM 2—a large-language model trained on specialized medical knowledge—is reportedly being tested in hospitals. Alphabet’s Google says it has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by allowing physicians to retrieve medical knowledge quickly to support their clinical decisions.

Warner raised the question of how the use of such software could compromise patient privacy, and noted that he’d raised concerns in 2019 that Google might be “skirting health privacy laws through secretive partnerships with leading hospital systems, under which it trained diagnostic models on sensitive health data without patients’ knowledge or consent.”

He called on Pichai to provide clarity on a dozen questions about Med-PaLM 2’s implementation, including whether patients were informed when the technology was being used, and whether they were able to opt out.

Google said in a statement that it develops AI systems with “safety, equity, evidence and privacy at the core.” Med-PaLM 2 was shared with a select group of healthcare organizations to gain important feedback through limited testing, it noted.

“These customers retain control over their data,” it said.