The Future of AI in Critical Care: An Exploration in Ten Parables

Abstract

We cannot know how artificial intelligence (AI) will ultimately change critical care, only that it is driving substantial change quickly. Through ten parables, we describe plausible benefits, harms, and trade-offs involving prognosis, monitoring, liability, research, clinical work, data governance, education, and triage. These parables are not predictions. They are intended to help clinicians, institutions, and regulators envision a range of potential scenarios and think broadly about which applications to pursue, which risks to consider, and which rules to establish before AI systems become entrenched. Each parable reveals how the outlook for AI in critical care is characterized by uncertainty. This includes uncertainty about what a single prediction means for the patient in front of us, how an application built and tested in one setting performs in another, accountability frameworks, professional practice and learning, patient privacy and autonomy, and more. Within each parable we try to keep visible what current evidence already supports and what remains speculative. We close with a set of questions designed to focus that speculation among the interested parties who will shape the future of AI in critical care.