Deus Sine Machina: Which Intelligence, for Whom

Description

Iwasaki and colleagues wrote a 2026 editorial on the rollout of artificial intelligence in gastrointestinal endoscopy. They argue it risks widening health inequities unless the field asks which tools serve which unmet needs. Commenting on the World Endoscopy Organization's response to the World Health Organization's artificial intelligence initiative, they praise its equity framing but push further.

Iwasaki notes innovation's ten-ninety gap, in which a tenth of research spending targets the diseases causing most suffering. They warn artificial intelligence could amplify it because its gains concentrate where data and infrastructure already exist. In wealthy systems the tools refine existing services. In much of the world the service is absent: a survey across four eastern African countries found six of eighty-seven physicians performing a bile duct procedure. Tools built for rich-world diseases would thus miss twice, the authors argue, on both margin and disease choice.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13500932