Medical & algorithmic decisions · Last checked 12 September 2026
Has medical AI killed anyone?
No. As of 12 September 2026, no court, coroner or official investigation has found that a medical or algorithmic AI system caused or contributed to anyone's death. 1 death is alleged in lawsuits, investigations or credible reporting but not proven.
0 deaths officially found to have been caused or contributed to by AI, by a court, coroner or government investigation.
1 more alleged in lawsuits, investigations and credible reporting, but not proven. Plus 0 cases with an unknown number of deaths.
Every case
Not counted here
- Therac-25 radiation overdoses (1985–1987). Massive radiation overdoses, some fatal, were caused by conventional software errors in a medical linear accelerator. No machine learning was involved. MIT (Leveson and Turner)
- Michigan's MiDAS unemployment system (2013–2015). A rule-based system that adjudicated fraud automatically and falsely accused more than 34,000 people. It wasn't machine learning, and no official body has attributed a specific death to it. IEEE Spectrum
- Dutch childcare benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire). The parliamentary inquiry describes the tax authority's risk-classification model as partly self-learning, and the harm to tens of thousands of families was severe. But no inquiry, court or regulator has linked a specific death to the model; the harm flowed mainly from human-directed fraud policy. Tweede Kamer (Dutch House of Representatives)
Questions
- Has medical AI killed anyone?
- No. As of 12 September 2026, no court, coroner or official investigation has found that a medical or algorithmic AI system caused or contributed to anyone's death. 1 death is alleged in lawsuits, investigations or credible reporting but not proven.
- How many deaths have medical and algorithmic decision systems been linked to?
- As of 12 September 2026: 0 deaths officially confirmed and 1 death alleged, across 1 case. Confirmed means a court, coroner, government investigation or regulator has formally found the system caused or contributed to the death. Alleged means it is blamed in a lawsuit, an official complaint, an open investigation or credible reporting, but that hasn't been proven.
- Where do these numbers come from?
- Every case links to its sources: court records, official investigation reports and reporting by established news organisations. The record is checked against the news every day, and each change must pass source and accuracy checks before it is published.