Potential reduction in healthcare carbon footprint by autonomous artificial intelligence

Abstract

Healthcare is a large contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions around the world, given current power generation mix. Telemedicine, with its reduced travel for providers and patients, has been proposed to reduce emissions. Artificial intelligence (AI), and especially autonomous AI, where the medical decision is made without human oversight, has the potential to further reduce healthcare GHG emissions, but concerns have also been expressed about GHG emissions from digital technology, and AI training and inference. In a real-world example, we compared the marginal GHG contribution of an encounter performed by an autonomous AI to that of an in-person specialist encounter. Results show that an 80% reduction may be achievable, and we conclude that autonomous AI has the potential to reduce healthcare GHG emissions.