Babylon Health lashes out at doctor who raised AI chatbot safety concerns

Controversial healthcare app maker Babylon Health has criticised the doctor who first raised concerns about the safety of their AI chatbot.

Babylon Health’s chatbot is available in the company’s GP at Hand app, a digital healthcare solution championed by health secretary Matt Hancock. The chatbot aims to reduce the burden on GPs and A&E departments by automating the triage process to determine whether someone can treat themselves at home, should book an online or in-person GP appointment, or go straight to a hospital.

A Twitter user under the pseudonym of Dr Murphy first reached out to us back in 2018 alleging that Babylon Health’s chatbot was giving unsafe advice. Dr Murphy recently unveiled himself as Dr David Watkins and went public with his findings at The Royal Society of Medicine’s “Recent developments in AI and digital health 2020“ event.

Over the past couple of years, Dr Watkins has provided countless examples of the chatbot giving dangerous advice.

In a press release (PDF) on Monday, Babylon Health calls Dr Watkins a “troll” who has “targeted members of our staff, partners, clients, regulators and journalists and tweeted defamatory content about us”.

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Source: AI News, 26 February 2020