By Speakin’ Out News Staff
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly entering hospitals, clinics, and smartphones, promising faster diagnoses and more efficient care. But beneath the hype lies a serious warning: AI can be inaccurate, biased, and dangerous — particularly for Black patients who already face systemic inequities in healthcare.
AI Can Confidently Lie — And It’s Not Just a Mistake
Recent research shows that AI systems — including popular chatbots — can generate convincing but false medical information when prompted, even when the information is entirely fabricated. A study by researchers at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine found that widely used AI models often repeated and elaborated on medical misinformation, producing confident explanations for diseases that do not exist. These so-called “hallucinations” occurred frequently when safeguards were not in place.
This is not just a technical flaw — it is a patient safety issue. In real-world settings, an AI system that invents symptoms or treatments for a nonexistent condition could mislead patients or caregivers into delaying proper care or making unsafe health decisions.
The Bias Trap: When Data Reflects Racism, AI Repeats It
AI systems learn from historical healthcare data — and that data reflects decades of unequal treatment. Long-standing disparities, such as Black patients being undertreated for pain or receiving delayed diagnoses, can become embedded in machine-learning models unless there is intentional corrective action.
Studies published in medical and policy journals show that AI algorithms can perpetuate bias against Black and other underserved patients because the datasets used to train them often under-represent these groups or encode past inequities. Researchers at Rutgers University and others have warned that biased inputs lead to biased outcomes. For example, diagnostic tools trained primarily on medical images from white patients have been shown to perform worse when analyzing scans from Black patients, increasing the risk of misdiagnosis.
Mental Health Risks Are Real
AI is also being promoted as a mental health tool, but experts caution against relying on chatbots for emotional or psychological support. Research has shown that some AI systems fail to recognize crisis signals, respond inadequately to self-harm prompts, or reinforce harmful beliefs rather than challenge them — a dangerous combination for vulnerable users.
The Bottom Line
AI can support healthcare, but it cannot replace human judgment, ethics, or accountability. For Black patients, unchecked AI risks automating discrimination at scale.
Don’t bet your health on a bot. Demand human oversight, transparency, and equity in care.