While artificial intelligence (AI) offers promising solutions in healthcare, it also poses a number of threats to human health and well-being via social, political, economic and security-related determinants of health. We describe three such main ways misused narrow AI serves as a threat to human health: through increasing opportunities for control and manipulation of people; enhancing and dehumanising lethal weapon capacity and by rendering human labour increasingly obsolescent. We then examine self-improving 'artificial general intelligence' (AGI) and how this could pose an existential threat to humanity itself. Finally, we discuss the critical need for effective regulation, including the prohibition of certain types and applications of AI, and echo calls for a moratorium on the development of self-improving AGI. We ask the medical and public health community to engage in evidence-based advocacy for safe AI, rooted in the precautionary principle.
Ranked as the second leading cause of death and the primary factor to adult disability worldwide, stroke has become a global epidemic problem and burden. As a developing country, Malaysia still faces challenges in providing ideal rehabilitation services to individuals with physical disabilities including stroke survivors. Conventional post-stroke care is often delivered in a team-based approach and involves several disciplines, such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, depending on the nature and severity of the deficits. Robots are potential tools for stroke rehabilitation as they can enhance existing conventional therapy by delivering a precise and consistent therapy of highly repetitive movements. In addition, robot-assisted physiotherapy could facilitate the effectiveness of unsupervised rehabilitation and thus, may reduce the cost and duration of therapist-assisted rehabilitation. Research on robot-assisted physiotherapy for stroke in Malaysia is slowly coming into the limelight in the past two decades. This review explores the effectiveness of robot-assisted physiotherapy particularly in improving motor functions of stroke survivors in Malaysia.