Harm and unnecessary care

Area: definition. Apply the shared measurement protocol.

Estimated progress toward AI-managed medicine

20% complete — judgment-based estimate as of November 7, 2026. Confidence: low. The scale starts at 0% before ChatGPT's public release in 2022 and ends at 100% when AI manages the field's continuing advancement without human participation. This rates the outcome's contribution to that transition, not the percentage of tasks solved, a measured fraction of the field, or time remaining.

The shared scoring rubric uses five equally weighted dimensions: execution, breadth, agenda-setting, validation, and sustained autonomous improvement. Points for this outcome are 10 + 5 + 0 + 5 + 0 = 20/100, in that order; each dimension has a maximum of 20. These component judgments make the estimate inspectable, but are not independently measured scores.

Reason for the estimate: A screening safety endpoint supports bounded use, while overdiagnosis, downstream procedures and other harms still require comprehensive human-led evaluation. The dated baseline below supplies the findings and source links used for this assessment. Unmeasured components receive no demonstrated-progress credit; missing evidence does not prove a missing capability.

What would move the score: Track recalls, benign biopsies, missed urgent cases, overdiagnosis estimates and treatment harms per eligible screened participant at fixed follow-up. Higher autonomy scores additionally require AI to select worthwhile work, validate results and improve the process over repeated cycles without human research management, repair or adjudication. Lower the score if replication fails, quality regresses or previously hidden human assistance is found. Preserve this dated estimate when adding future assessments.

Measurement and acceptance rule

Adverse events, false-positive procedures, missed urgent cases, and inappropriate treatments per eligible patient.

Evidence requirements

Evaluate the complete clinical workflow prospectively, preferably with randomized allocation where feasible. Compare with current care, not an artificially weak clinician baseline. Separate AI alone from clinician-plus-AI. Prespecify clinically meaningful differences and non-inferiority margins, use adequate power, and conduct follow-up sufficient to detect delayed harms. A higher detection rate alone does not establish longer survival.

Related milestones

See the area's proposed milestones. Proposed targets are distinct from the dated evidence below.

Baseline as of November 7 2026

Status: Measured screening safety; wider harms incomplete. Sources accessed November 7, 2026. This is a documentary baseline, not an independent replication or an assertion of the worldwide best result. An unknown measurement is not zero.

Dated findings

January 31, 2026: MASAI's interval-cancer endpoint met noninferiority, with specificity reported at 98.5% in both groups. MASAI randomized screening trial follow-up.

Interpretation and tracking value

Noninferiority does not mean zero harm. This result does not quantify all false-positive procedures, overdiagnosis, or inappropriate treatments.

Next comparable measurement

Track recalls, benign biopsies, missed urgent cases, overdiagnosis estimates and treatment harms per eligible screened participant at fixed follow-up. Preserve this dated observation; append future results with their model/system version, denominator, budget and evidence level rather than overwriting it.