How do Australian Vets feel about AI?

VRU 2023 - 64(3): 473-483

December 05, 2023

Background: This article discusses the perspectives of Australian veterinary professionals on artificial intelligence (AI) in veterinary practice, especially in diagnostic imaging.

Study: The study was a survey design that aimed to understand the attitudes, applications, and concerns of veterinarians, radiologists, nurses, and technologists regarding the emerging role of AI in veterinary imaging.

Methods: The study used an online survey instrument that was circulated to the members of three Australian veterinary professional organizations. The survey consisted of 19 questions that covered demographic information and scaled responses about AI perception and preference. The survey was open for 5 months and received 86 responses. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: The results showed that respondents had a high level of acceptance of AI for lower order tasks (e.g., patient registration, triage, and dispensing) and less acceptance of AI for higher order tasks (e.g., surgery and interpretation). Respondents also had a low priority perception for AI in diagnosis, prognosis, and decision making, and a high priority for AI in quantitation, segmentation, reconstruction, and image quality enhancement. Respondents expressed moderate or high concern for medico-legal, ethical, diversity, and privacy issues, but no concern for AI usefulness and redundancy. Respondents also indicated a gap between their current and desired level of AI understanding and education.

Limitations: The study had a low response rate among the professional organizations, which may reflect a participation bias or a lack of interest in AI. The study also used ordinal data that limited the integration power of the analysis. The study only represented the Australian perspective and may not be generalizable to other countries or regions.

Conclusions: The study concluded that Australian veterinary professionals recognized the value and importance of AI for assisting with repetitive tasks, performing less complex tasks, and enhancing the quality of outputs, but also had some caution and concern regarding the ethical and legal aspects of AI development and implementation. The study also suggested a need for more AI education and preparedness among veterinary professionals.

The perception of the role AI will play in clinical questions over the next 10 years. 0 = no role; 1 = AI assistance for human in control; 2 = AI augmentation or support for human activities; 3 = AI automation with human ready but not required; 4 = human augmentation with human supervision of AI; 5 = AI autonomy. The red tick indicates those variables where respondents indicated had a greater role for AI over the next 10 years (cumulative total of category 0, 1, and 2 less than 40%) and red crosses where there was lower anticipated role (cumulative total of category 0, 1, and 2 greater than 60%). Absence of markers suggested less definitive attitudes.

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