Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms hold promise to reduce inequalities across race and socioeconomic status. One of the most important domains of racial and economic inequalities is medical outcomes; Black and low-income people are more likely to die from many diseases. Algorithms can help reduce these inequalities because they are less likely than human doctors to make biased decisions. Unfortunately, people are generally averse to algorithms making important moral decisions—including in medicine—undermining the adoption of AI in healthcare. Here we use the COVID-19 pandemic to examine whether the threat of racial and economic inequality increases the preference for algorithm decision-making. Four studies (N = 2819) conducted in the United States and Singapore show that emphasizing inequality in medical outcomes increases the preference for algorithm decision-making for triage decisions. These studies suggest that one way to increase the acceptance of AI in healthcare is to emphasize the threat of inequality and its negative outcomes associated with human decision-making.

人工智能（AI）算法有望减少种族和社会经济地位方面的不平等现象。种族和经济不平等的最重要领域之一是医疗结果；黑人和低收入人群更有可能死于多种疾病。算法可以帮助减少这些不平等现象，因为与人类医生相比，它们不大可能做出有偏见的决策。不幸的是，人们通常不赞成做出重要的道德决策（包括医学上）的算法，从而破坏了AI在医疗保健中的采用。在这里，我们使用COVID-19大流行来检验种族和经济不平等的威胁是否增加了算法决策的偏好。在美国和新加坡进行的四项研究（N = 2819）表明，强调医疗结果中的不平等会增加对分类诊断算法决策的偏好。这些研究表明，增加AI在医疗保健中的接受程度的一种方法是强调不平等的威胁及其与人类决策相关的负面结果。