Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy

By David Cha, MD, associate chief medical informatics officer, Premier Health 

Walk into any Premier Health hospital or clinic today, and you’ll find AI quietly at work. It summarizes charts, helps draft notes while we’re still thinking, and will soon offer suggestions before we even complete our documentation. It’s an exciting time to practice medicine, and AI offers a major shift in how we deliver care.

For some, AI is a black box tool we use without understanding it. Like the stethoscope, we need to know how it works to use it properly. And like any tool, it can be misused. The American Medical Association has made it clear: physicians need AI literacy. Not coding skills or machine learning degrees, but fluency that helps us know what an algorithm can and cannot do. How does it learn? When might it fail? When should we trust our judgment over the machine’s suggestion?

Bias, equity, and ethics are real concerns. AI reflects the data it is trained on, and without a critical eye and high-quality data, it can reinforce disparities and generate flawed suggestions. The National Academy of Medicine emphasizes that physicians must engage as users and evaluators to make sure AI improves care rather than unintentionally harm it. We can enjoy the benefits and make it work for us, we just need to be thoughtful and educated as we go forward.

Start building literacy with these perspectives: Artificial Intelligence for Health Professions Educators and Critical AI Health Literacy as Liberation Technology.

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