AI and the World's Hard Problems · Medicine & drug discovery · arXiv · 2026-10-20
Indirect Influences of Artificial Intelligence Advice on Complex Sepsis Treatment Decisions
The study examines how AI advice affects clinicians' hemodynamic decisions for complex sepsis cases. Retrospectively, the AI improved on original decisions overall across 6,928 patients but performed significantly worse in complex cases. In a pre-registered experiment with 228 critical care physicians, those given simple model recommendations chose optimal treatments in 56.3% of decisions, versus 31.8% when they always followed the advice.