T
he aim of the third United Nations (UN) Sustainable
Development Goal, dedicated to “Good Health
and Well-Being,” is that all people can access
the health services they need without facing
financial hardship. The goal has
three targets: 1) 1 billion more people
should benefit from universal health
coverage, 2) 1 billion more people
should be better protected from
health emergencies, and 3) 1 billion
more people should enjoy better
health and well-being (World Health
Organization, 2018).
21
Artificial in-
telligence (AI) is generally acknowl-
edged as an important component in
achieving these three targets.
Medical AI dates to the early 1970s,
when the AI community was fasci-
nated by the possibilities of applica-
tions in the medical domain.
1
The field
went through cycles of great achieve-
ments, followed by inflated expecta-
tion and then huge disappointment (“AI winter”). Due to the
big success of statistical data-driven machine learning, we
are experiencing another “AI spring,” with great enthusiasm
and excitement in the medical community. The availabil-
ity of very large data sets in (precision) medicine and recent
developments in statistical machine learning, particularly
deep learning, have led to impressive results, with machines
The Ten
Commandments
of Ethical Medical AI
Heimo Müller, Medical University Graz
Michaela Theresia Mayrhofer, BBMRI-ERIC
Evert-Ben Van Veen, MLC Foundation
Andreas Holzinger, Medical University Graz
We propose ten commandments as
practical guidelines for those applying
artificial intelligence to provide a concise
checklist to a wide group of stakeholders.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MC.2021.3074263
Date of current version: 1 July 2021
EDITOR HSIAO-YING LIN
hsiaoying.lin@gmail.com
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE/
MACHINE LEARNING
COMPUTER 0018-9162/21©2021IEEE PUBLISHED BY THE IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY JULY 2021 119