WHO issues ethics guidance for AI health research

The World Health Organization issued recommendations for ethical review and oversight of health research that uses, studies or develops artificial intelligence. The guidance calls on researchers to identify risks early and urges ethics committees to add expertise, training and resources for assessing transparency, bias, fairness, accountability, privacy and potential harm. WHO also assigns roles to funders, journals, data-governance bodies, professional societies and regulators for risks that individual project reviews cannot address. The report is guidance rather than an enforceable rule and describes itself as a starting point for future standards.