Anna Louise Todsen

Psychology (2024 cohort)

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools healthcare care settings is reshaping medical decision-making. Many AI tools provide numerical estimates, such as disease risk, but often without conveying critical information about the uncertainty of those estimates. This can lead to suboptimal use of the data — such as over-reliance on a perceived precision that may be misleading due to underlying uncertainty. Since AI tools functions within the broader context of human decision-making, it is crucial to understand how it interacts with cognitive and social factors to ensure its ethical and effective use. My DPhil will investigate whether the use of AI tools in decision making can be increased and improved via effective communication of algorithmic uncertainty.

Prior to starting my DPhil, I worked as a Junior Analyst in the Health and Wellbeing group at RAND Europe, a not-for-profit policy research institute. Here, I contributed to several projects including a rapid evaluation of the use of home sensors in social care, a study on the governance of emerging technology, and an evaluation of the health and wellbeing impacts of the HS2 infrastructure project. I remain involved in the organisation as a Research Fellow. Before this, I was a TrygFonden Scholar at the University at Oxford, where I completed an MSc in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation. My MSc thesis focused on the use of big data in health policy formation for my thesis. I also have a first-class undergraduate degree from the University of St Andrews in Social Anthropology and Psychology.