HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

The WHO's S.A.R.A.H. Bot Reported to Provide Inconsistent and Inadequate Health Information

April 24, 2024

The WHO's AI-powered health advisor, S.A.R.A.H. (Smart AI Resource Assistant for Health), is alleged to provide inconsistent and inadequate health information. The bot reportedly gives contradictory responses to the same queries, fails to offer specific contact details for healthcare providers, and inadequately handles severe mental health crises, often giving irrelevant or unhelpful advice.
Alleged deployer
who, s.a.r.a.h.-(smart-ai-resource-assistant-for-health)
Alleged developer
who
Alleged harmed parties
general-public, people-seeking-medical-advice

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/685

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.