Trust and Success of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

The European Commission has proposed legislation to enable the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI). However, many complex algorithmic systems that offer the greatest hope for dramatic advances in medicine often fail to meet the strict criteria of the European Commission - e.g. they often do not operate transparently. As one of the criteria for assessing the ethical use of AI, I propose the criterion of successful performance since perhaps systems that work consistently well could be trusted even if they do not meet the criterion of transparency. Here we encounter the problem of the relationship between trust and performance. Not only does our trust in AI depend on the successful operation of the systems, but the success of their operation depends on our trust since their performance also relies on the use of data we provide for algorithm's learning. Perhaps we need to trust the systems before they can be trustworthy.