PROFESSOR GERKE CO-AUTHORS AN ESSAY IN STAT NEWS
July 2021 — Professor Sara Gerke is co-author of a “First Opinion” essay entitled Explaining Medical AI Is Easier Said Than Done in STAT News, which is an award-winning source of news about health, medicine, and scientific discovery. Professor Gerke’s essay, which was written with Boris Babic with help from Glenn Cohen and Theodoros Evgeniou, builds on their article that recently was published in Science.
The use of artificial intelligence in medicine is paralleled by concerns among patients, physicians, and policymakers about the use of black-box algorithms — namely algorithms that are extremely difficult, or even impossible, for humans to understand.
Explainable AI (XAI), a new field of research, aims to address these concerns. This essay argues that XAI may not help and, in some examples, can hurt.
Professor Sara Gerke is an Assistant Professor of Law at Penn State Dickinson Law. Her research focuses on the ethical and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and big data for health care and health law in the United States and Europe. Before joining Penn State Dickinson Law, Professor Gerke served as a Research Fellow in Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and Law at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School for the Project on Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law (PMAIL).