The AI apocalypse might begin with a cost-cutting healthcare algorithm
On Monday, patients in California filed a class action lawsuit against Cigna Healthcare, one of the largest health insurance providers in the U.S., for wrongfully denying their claims — and using an algorithm to do it. The algorithm, called PXDX, was automatically denying patients’ claims at an astonishing rate — the technology would spend an estimated 1.2 seconds “reviewing” each claim. During a two-month period in 2022, Cigna denied 300,000 pre-approved claims using this system. Of claim denials that were appealed by Cigna customers, roughly 80% were later overturned.
This is bad for people, but it could also sound wonky, banal or even “small bore” to tech experts. Yet it is precisely the kind of existential threat that we should worry about when we look at the consequences of bringing artificial intelligence into our lives.
You might remember this spring, when the biggest and wealthiest names in the tech world gave us some pretty grave warnings about the future of AI. After a flurry of opinion pieces and full-length speeches, they found a way to boil it all down to a simple “should” statement:
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”