Background

Futurists have predicted that new autonomous technologies, embedded with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), will lead to substantial job losses in many sectors disrupting many aspects of healthcare. Mental health appears ripe for such disruption given the global illness burden, stigma, and shortage of care providers.

Objective

To characterize the global psychiatrist community’s opinion regarding the potential of future autonomous technology (referred to here as AI/ML) to replace key tasks carried out in mental health practice.

Design

Cross sectional, random stratified sample of psychiatrists registered with Sermo, a global networking platform open to verified and licensed physicians.

Main outcome measures

We measured opinions about the likelihood that AI/ML tools would be able to fully replace – not just assist – the average psychiatrist in performing 10 key psychiatric tasks. Among those who considered replacement likely, we measured opinions about how many years from now such a capacity might emerge. We also measured psychiatrist’s perceptions about whether benefits of AI/ML would outweigh the risks.

Results

Survey respondents were 791 psychiatrists from 22 countries representing North America, South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Only 3.8 % of respondents felt it was likely that future technology would make their jobs obsolete and only 17 % felt that future AI/ML was likely to replace a human clinician for providing empathetic care. Documenting and updating medical records (75 %) and synthesizing information (54 %) were the two tasks where a majority predicted that AI/ML could fully replace human psychiatrists. Female- and US-based doctors were more uncertain that the benefits of AI would outweigh risks than male- and non-US doctors, respectively. Around one in 2 psychiatrists did however predict that their jobs would be substantially changed by AI/ML.

Conclusions

Our findings provide compelling insights into how physicians think about AI/ML which in turn may help us better integrate technology and reskill doctors to enhance mental health care.

中文翻译：

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人工智能与精神病学的未来：来自全球医师调查的见解。

背景

未来主义者预测，嵌入了人工智能（AI）和机器学习（ML）的新自主技术将导致许多部门的大量失业，从而扰乱医疗保健的许多方面。考虑到全球疾病负担，污名和护理人员的短缺，这种破坏的心理健康似乎已经成熟。

目的

代表全球精神科医生社区关于未来自主技术（在此称为AI / ML）潜力替代心理健康实践中执行的关键任务的意见。

设计

向Sermo注册的精神科医生的横断面，随机分层样本，Sermo是一个全球网络平台，向经过验证和许可的医生开放。

主要观察指标

我们评估了有关AI / ML工具能够完全代替（而不只是协助）普通精神病医生执行10个关键精神病任务的可能性的意见。在那些认为可能更换的人中，我们评估了从现在起多少年后这种能力的看法。我们还评估了心理医生对AI / ML的益处是否会超过风险的看法。

结果

受访者来自22个国家的791位精神科医生，分别来自北美，南美，欧洲和亚太地区。只有3.8％的受访者认为，未来的技术可能会使他们的工作过时，而只有17％的受访者认为，未来的AI / ML可能会代替人类临床医生提供移情护理。记录和更新病历（75％）和综合信息（54％）是大多数人预测AI / ML可以完全替代人类精神科医生的两项任务。女性医生和美国医生分别比男性医生和非美国医生更不确定AI的收益是否超过风险。但是，大约有二分之一的精神科医生预测AI / ML将大大改变他们的工作。

结论

我们的发现为医生如何看待AI / ML提供了令人信服的见解，这反过来又可以帮助我们更好地整合技术并提高医生的技能，以增强精神卫生保健。