Weighing the benefits and risks of collecting race and ethnicity data in clinical settings for medical artificial intelligence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many countries around the world do not collect race and ethnicity data in clinical settings. Without such identified data, it is difficult to identify biases in the training data or output of a given artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, and to work towards medical AI tools that do not exclude or further harm marginalised groups. However, the collection of these data also poses specific risks to racially minoritised populations and other marginalised groups. This Viewpoint weighs the risks of collecting race and ethnicity data in clinical settings against the risks of not collecting those data. The collection of more comprehensive identified data (ie, data that include personal attributes such as race, ethnicity, and sex) has the possibility to benefit racially minoritised populations that have historically faced worse health outcomes and health-care access, and inadequate representation in research. However, the collection of extensive demographic data raises important concerns that include the construction of intersectional social categories (ie, race and its shifting meaning in different sociopolitical contexts), the risks of biological reductionism, and the potential for misuse, particularly in situations of historical exclusion, violence, conflict, genocide, and colonialism. Careful navigation of identified data collection is key to building better AI algorithms and to work towards medicine that does not exclude or harm marginalised groups.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".