Improving fairness in aging-related AI: a conceptual model for mitigating biases

Artificial intelligence (AI) has shown immense potential to revolutionize healthcare, particularly within gerontology, by improving accuracy, efficiency, and personalized care through its capacity of analyzing high-dimensional patient-level data. However, significant concerns are emerging around biases embedded in AI systems, which could exacerbate existing healthcare gaps associated with legally protected characteristics such as race/ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status. This article addresses these critical issues by presenting actionable strategies designed to enhance fairness and equity in aging-related AI through an innovative conceptual model of de-biasing from the gerontology perspective. The transformative potential of AI alongside prevalent biases is illustrated through three representative scenarios-disease diagnosis, chronic condition management, and geriatric rehabilitation-highlighting real-world implications. Furthermore, major sources of bias throughout the AI lifecycle are presented, including biases stemming from unrepresentative training data, inappropriate AI model selection, and insufficient diversity in user feedback. Finally, we introduce aging- and older adult-focused de-biasing approaches guided by our model, providing practical frameworks and solutions for creating an equitable, effective, and inclusive socio-technological environment.