Older adults don't trust AI-generated health information: 4 notes

Seventy-four percent of older adults say they have little to no trust in health information generated by AI, according to a University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging.

The report analyzed data from 3,379 adults between ages 50 and 101. The survey was administered between February and March.

Four things to know:

  1. Fifty-eight percent of respondents reported looking for health information on the internet in the last year.

  2. About 33% of respondents said it was very easy to find health information online; however, those with fair or poor physical health, mental health, or memory said it was not easy to find accurate health information online. Those older than 65, those who were Black and non-Hispanic, and those with lower education levels were less likely to seek health information online.

  3. Twenty percent of respondents said they had little to no confidence in their ability to identify health misinformation.

  4. Trust in AI-generated health information was lower among women, those with less education, lower household incomes, and those who had not had a healthcare visit in the past year.

"Amid this lack of trust, our findings also highlight the key role that healthcare providers and pharmacists play as trusted health messengers in older adults' lives, and even the role that friends or family with medical backgrounds can play," poll director Jeffrey Kullgren, MD, a primary care physician at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, said in an Oct. 16 news release. "We also find that websites run by health organizations are seen by most who use them as very trustworthy, which suggests a need to encourage more people to use them."

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