Through the Looking Glass: A Critical Examination of AI and Healthcare in Australian Media
Gayathri Biju
Artwork created using AI from the prompt Alice stepping through a Victorian mirror, revealing a futuristic vision of AI in healthcare, in a sketch-like style.
In ancient times, when people had questions with no answers, they believed God would answer them. Today, when faced with similar questions, many turn to Artificial Intelligence (AI), expecting it to hold all the answers. In modern media, AI frequently emerges as a panacea for many of healthcare’s most persistent challenges. Every day, headlines laud AI’s transformative potential—from developing vaccines to detecting lung cancer. Yet, as an observer of both the media’s portrayal of recent technological advancements and the field’s actual progress, I often find myself questioning the gap between these narratives.
Many a time, mainstream news media offers more optimistic premises to their articles than necessary, leaving no space for the audience to make their own hypotheses. However, in scholarly discourse, we observe concerns about security threats, bodily autonomy, reproducibility challenges and disproportionate benefits. This dissonance between media portrayals and technological realities speaks volumes about the way AI is framed to the public.
A recent study examining “social imaginaries“– the collective ways societies envision and frame their future – of AI in healthcare in the media across three divergent countries (USA, Germany, and China) revealed two dominant narratives: one focusing on enhancing healthcare capacity (China) and the other on enhancing patient care (USA and Germany). Despite the geopolitical differences between these countries, the media unanimously hail AI as doctors’ helping hands, including the AI-hesitant Germany. If even with such sociocultural differences there seems to be a running theme of AI as saviour throughout the mainstream media, how does Australian media position AI within its healthcare system? As healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public increasingly turn to AI-driven solutions, it is the need of the hour to critically recognise the recurring themes within media that define AI’s representation.
Once, space exploration was an indicator of a country’s technological progress, today, an AI “arms race” has taken its place. Although Australia may not be on the leaderboard yet, the country is making strides, with the Albanese Government investing $30 million in AI in healthcare research – the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne have each received nearly $3 million to explore AI’s integration into healthcare infrastructure. However, beyond funding announcements, Australia is yet to make a groundbreaking achievement in the AI-driven healthcare sphere against that of the world.
Since Australia is a relatively new player in the race, Australian media do not view AI through those rose-tinted glasses of Anglo-Saxon countries like the UK and the US. Instead, the emphasis is on practical applications and ethical concerns in news media platforms. For instance, in this news reportage of how Queensland scientists are trying to use AI to detect diseases, the reporter asks the age-old question of how robots are replacing humans, but she immediately responds that humans are not removed from the process, but in fact, this solution simply answers the skill shortage in Australia.
While the rest of the world has acknowledged AI as the toast of the town, Australian media continues to focus on readying its citizens to AI as an entity of the future, mainly because “Australians are technoskeptics”. However, when much of the global discourse surrounding AI focuses on its potential to improve efficiency and outcomes, there is also a need to ensure that these technologies serve the specific needs of Indigenous populations. One such representation was observed a year ago on ABC news channel, where health practitioners used AI to perform ultrasounds in remote Australia to answer the shortage of sonographers. Similarly, another news report of the Australian invention of an AI-powered retinal scanner highlighted how this means eye care will be made accessible for the isolated and remote communities of the WA’s Pilbara region.
This representation of AI echoes the humanities perspective Lupton proposes, where AI is not just a technical or scientific mechanism, but also a sociocultural artefact. Therefore, the media must be more careful about the societal values AI represents, such as how AI is implemented and whether its benefits are distributed equitably. This representation of AI was absent in the US-UK media. When AI models often rely on data that is not reflective of Indigenous lifestyles, it can lead to underrepresentation in medical research, and thus, the media must raise such questions as the watchdog of society. While there remains a significant gap in the representation of their needs in AI development, Australia can still call it a small victory against the Anglo-Saxon countries.
While AI is often treated as the future of Australian healthcare, its implementation still remains uncertain. For instance, while media reports highlight AI-powered diagnostic tools, nearly half of the public hospitals in Queensland still rely on paper records for clinical documentation. It is this stark contrast between AI-driven optimism and ground reality that we, as media consumers, must be wary of the echo chambers of the government and the media that reinforce such sunny representations of AI. The challenge, then, is to engage with multiple perspectives and look through the “image” of AI printed on paper.
If the Australian media could maintain a mix of hope and scrutiny in their depiction of AI – emphasizing its potential for change alongside its practical challenges within the Australian context – it would empower the public to view AI not as a guaranteed hero but as a tool that demands careful application. The true test for AI in Australian healthcare lies not in the speed of its adoption but in its ability to meet the demands of all Australians, especially those residing in distant and Indigenous areas.