Artificial Intelligence on Call: The Physician's Decision of Whether to Use AI in Clinical Practice.

This article analyzes physicians’ decisions to use artificial intelligence (AI) in prescribing treatment plans, focusing on how clinical uncertainty, legal liability, and insurance reimbursement influence AI adoption. It compares two patient-protection schemes: the prevailing scheme, where AI assists but does not replace the standard of care, and an emerging scheme, where AI recommendations become the new standard of care. The study finds that physicians may overuse AI in low-uncertainty cases—using AI without following its advice—and underuse AI in high-uncertainty cases where AI could improve decisions, driven largely by liability concerns and financial incentives. Additionally, as AI precision improves, physicians might paradoxically reduce AI use for certain patients to avoid increased liability. Insurance reimbursement policies that pay physicians only when they follow AI recommendations tend to reduce inappropriate AI use. The emerging patient-protection scheme can decrease AI underuse but may increase overuse for some patients, indicating no single liability framework is universally optimal.