(STUDY FINDS) — Using artificial intelligence in the field of medicine can have dire consequences, a new study warns. Researchers from Northwestern University are highlighting a significant challenge in the use of AI in medical pathology: the difficulty in accurately analyzing tissue samples when they contain contaminants from other sources.
This problem, known as tissue contamination, is well-understood by human pathologists but poses a serious issue for AI-powered computers, which are often developed in ideal and controlled environments. Simply put, AI is having issues dealing with the flawed and imperfect real world.
“We train AIs to tell ‘A’ versus ‘B’ in a very clean, artificial environment, but, in real life, the AI will see a variety of materials that it hasn’t trained on. When it does, mistakes can happen,” says study corresponding author Dr. Jeffery Goldstein, director of perinatal pathology and an assistant professor of perinatal pathology and autopsy at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in a university release.
