Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a tool in Australian fertility treatments.
It assists embryologists by analysing embryo development to improve selection for implantation.
However, there is no clear data on how widely AI is used.
So should artificial intelligence be deciding who gets to be born?
On Monday morning’s episode of The Briefing, we spoke to Catherine Mills, Professor of Bioethics at Monash University, to discuss the pros and cons of AI in IVF.
Mills said that AI uses time-lapse imaging and compares embryo photos against a large dataset of over 20,000 images.
“There is evidence that these algorithms do have benefits. They might kind of increase or decrease the time that it takes for someone to get pregnant by helping to choose the best embryos. It speeds up that process,” she said.
Mills explains that AI algorithms, including those used in IVF, can sometimes perform better for certain groups than others, often due to biases in the training data.
She noted that this is particularly interesting, as one of the classic challenges with AI lies in unconscious bias and how implicit bias becomes embedded in the system.
“You might see people having their embryos potentially discarded or not chosen for implantation based on what is really just a kind of bias in algorithmic decision-making,” Mills said.
“We’re going to rely more and more on that algorithm. So then we’re kind of giving up the decision-making power. And that’s really when AI is then making decisions about who will be coming into the world.”
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