Building on its recent guidance for organizations’ use and governance of clinical AI, the American Medical Association on Thursday gave a deeper breakdown of how it believes different parties should be responsible for decisions, actions and failures involving the technology.

The latest framework from AMA’s Center for Digital Health and AI addresses liability issues the group said are currently unanswered by existing liability frameworks. Those structures, it said, could leave physicians facing "liability for risks they cannot reasonably prevent, while patients may struggle to seek remedies when AI causes harm."

Other key issues with the status quo liability frameworks, AMA said, are ambiguity around when product liability applies to AI; how contract terms and disclaimers from developers can distance responsibility from risk control; and whether deploying healthcare organizations hold various responsibilities specific to AI, such as local testing or outcomes monitoring.

AMA said the clinical AI liability framework it’s advancing "recognizes that multiple parties may bear liability for the use of AI when something goes wrong," and then aligns that accountability based on a party’s ability to prevent harm. Responsibility is spread out in areas where control is shared, but it does not become interchangeable, and no party’s obligations disappear because another party also bears some,” AMA wrote in a brief outlining its thinking.

As for the physicians AMA represents, the liability framework calls for doctors to "be responsible for the clinical judgment they can meaningfully exercise, based on the system’s intended use, known limitations and the information available at the point of care."

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