PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Frederik Federspiel
AU  - Ruth Mitchell
AU  - Asha Asokan
AU  - Carlos Umana
AU  - David McCoy
TI  - Threats by artificial intelligence to human health and human existence
AID  - 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-010435
DP  - 2023 May 01
TA  - BMJ Global Health
PG  - e010435
VI  - 8
IP  - 5
4099  - http://gh.bmj.com/content/8/5/e010435.short
4100  - http://gh.bmj.com/content/8/5/e010435.full
SO  - BMJ Global Health2023 May 01; 8
AB  - While artificial intelligence (AI) offers promising solutions in healthcare, it also poses a number of threats to human health and well-being via social, political, economic and security-related determinants of health. We describe three such main ways misused narrow AI serves as a threat to human health: through increasing opportunities for control and manipulation of people; enhancing and dehumanising lethal weapon capacity and by rendering human labour increasingly obsolescent. We then examine self-improving ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI) and how this could pose an existential threat to humanity itself. Finally, we discuss the critical need for effective regulation, including the prohibition of certain types and applications of AI, and echo calls for a moratorium on the development of self-improving AGI. We ask the medical and public health community to engage in evidence-based advocacy for safe AI, rooted in the precautionary principle.There are no data in this work.