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

April 24, 2024

The World Health Organization's AI-powered health advisor, S.A.R.A.H., has been criticized for providing inconsistent and inadequate health information. The bot reportedly offers contradictory responses to the same queries, fails to provide specific contact details for healthcare providers, and inadequately handles severe mental health crises, often giving irrelevant or unhelpful advice. Such incidents underscore the importance of trustworthy AI and effective governance. JOIN US at HISPI Project Cerebellum as we work towards establishing guardrails for AI to prevent harm and ensure safe and secure AI practices.

Learn how HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage) can help address these issues and shape the future of responsible AI.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.690, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.671, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.669, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

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.