Ethical guidance for reporting and evaluating claims of AI outperforming human doctors

Abstract

Claims of AI outperforming medical practitioners are under scrutiny, as the evidence supporting many of these claims is not convincing or transparently reported. These claims often lack specificity, contextualization, and empirical grounding. In this comment, we offer constructive ethical guidance that can benefit authors, journal editors, and peer reviewers when reporting and evaluating findings in studies comparing AI to physician performance. The guidance provided here forms an essential addition to current reporting guidelines for healthcare studies using machine learning.