Kaiser nurses rail against AI use in hospitals at San Francisco protest
Clad in red shirts and holding signs reading, “Trust nurses, not AI,” hundreds of nurses from across California picketed outside Kaiser Permanente’s San Francisco Medical Center on Monday to protest the use of artificial intelligence by the major hospital system—and the greater health care industry.
Nurses who rallied outside the hospital on Geary Boulevard as part of the protest organized by the California Nurses Association argued that the technology is untested and unregulated and said they fear it will make patient care worse.
“There are some uses of AI that are not acceptable,” Michelle Gutierrez Vo, a family medicine nurse, said during the demonstration.
The action coincided with the start of the KP International Integrated Care Experience conference in the Bay Area. The three-day event includes discussions on the use of advanced analytics and AI in health care, according to a public itinerary posted online.
According to the union, Kaiser Permanente is one of the earliest adopters of AI in the health care industry. The California Nurses Association, which represents 24,000 Kaiser nurses, is demanding that workers and unions be involved in the development of the technology and decisions on how AI is used in patient care.
