Study finds AI's health advice still faces trust issues
About 1 in 5 adults say AI is actually doing more to hurt those seeking accurate health information.
Although a growing number of people are interacting with artificial intelligence, the majority of adults aren’t sure they can tell the difference between true and false information from AI tools.
This is according to the latest KFF Health Misinformation Tracking Poll, which delved into the health side of AI chatbots. The study found 1 in 6 adults use AI chatbots at least once a month to find health information and advice – even higher (25%) for adults under age 30.
However, about 56% of those who use or interact with AI indicated they are not confident that the health information they receive is accurate. People were more likely to trust AI-generated information about cooking, home maintenance and technology.
Corresponding to a greater propensity to use AI platforms, younger adults are more likely than older adults to express confidence in their own ability to tell truth from fiction on these platforms, the report found. Meanwhile, seven in ten adults ages 65 and over say they are not confident they can tell whether information is true or false on AI chatbots.
When it comes to health information specifically, just 1 in 3 adults say they are very confident (5%) or somewhat confident (31%) that the health information and advice they may come across on AI chatbot platforms is accurate. About 6 in 10 adults – including a majority (56%) of AI users – say they are not too confident or not at all confident in the accuracy of health information provided by AI chatbots. Adults under age 50 and Black and Hispanic adults are somewhat more likely than those over age 50 and White adults, respectively, to say they have confidence in the accuracy of health information from AI chatbots, though about half or more across age and racial and ethnic groups say they are not confident, KFF said.
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Just over half of adults say they have at least a fair amount of trust in AI chatbots to provide reliable information about practical tasks (54%), while nearly half trust them to provide reliable information about technology (48%). However, about 3 in 10 adults trust AI bots to provide reliable health information (29%) and one in five trust them for information about politics (19%).
Further, about 1 in 5 adults say AI is actually doing more to hurt those seeking accurate health information, while about the same percentage think it is doing more to help people. The majority said they aren’t sure of the impact of AI on health information seekers.