Nature Health paper: AI is now a determinant of health — time for an epidemiology of AI
EricTopol · x · 2026-09-23
A Nature Health perspective argues that AI systems increasingly shape how people access health information, make medical decisions, and receive care — yet epidemiology lacks frameworks for measuring AI exposure or studying its population-level effects. The authors propose AI now functions as a determinant of health and borrow a conceptual framework from environmental epidemiology.
Key distinctions:
- Ambient AI exposure: algorithmic curation and AI-mediated institutional decisions affecting populations regardless of individual choice;
- Personal AI exposure: direct, volitional use of AI tools.
Drawing on nationally representative US survey data, they show why today's experimental studies miss AI's chronic, population-scale effects, and argue an epidemiology of AI is urgently needed for study design, health equity, and governance.
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