Nurses plan to hold a “solidarity march” and rally Tuesday. Aug. 29 in Los Angeles, supporting Southern California’s striking writers and actors who are concerned about the growing use of artificial intelligence in their industries.

Writers want AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, to be used only as a tool that can help with research or facilitate script ideas and not as a tool to replace them, while actors fear AI could be used to replicate their likeness without compensation.

Nurses are equally alarmed by the use of AI in their industry, claiming it often offers inflexible, one-size-fits-all solutions for medical care while infringing on a nurse’s ability to critically evaluate a patient’s condition. They cite a recent study published by the National Library of Medicine as a prime example.

See more: Labor disputes, walkouts, protests rampant throughout region

The AI-driven Epic Sepsis Model, used at hundreds of U.S. hospitals, is designed to predict the onset of sepsis, a condition that occurs when a patient’s immune system has a dangerous reaction to an infection.

The study found the technology poorly predicted sepsis, raising fundamental concerns about sepsis management nationwide.

Similar concerns have arisen regarding remote patient monitoring and automated clinical predictions, which nurses say have them responding to faulty alerts showing a patient is in distress when they’re not.

“We understand that technology is not going away, but this is undermining a healthcare worker’s ability to think critically,” said Cathy Kennedy, a registered nurse at the Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center and president of California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.

An estimated 200 CNA/NNU-represented nurses are expected to be on hand for Tuesday’s march, carrying signs that say “Flip the script on AI.” The event is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. at 1456 N. Van Ness Ave. in Los Angeles.

Kennedy said nurses deal with patients in real time and are in a better position to determine when someone’s medications or care needs to be adjusted.

“Policies prevent us from making changes without first notifying a physician,” she said.

Kennedy said healthcare workers need to remain in control and be free to deal with medical situations as they arise without being hampered by the constraints of A1-driven algorithms.

“It goes back to humanity,” she said. “We embrace technology as long as it’s used as an adjunct. I have enough wherewithal to know that you have to use your eyes, ears and nose to really know what’s going on.”

On a broader scale, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report to Congress last year, warning about the use of AI to combat online problems, such as fraud, impersonation scams and cyberstalking.

“Their detection capabilities regarding online harms are significantly limited by inherent flaws in their design such as unrepresentative datasets, faulty classifications, failure to identify new phenomena and lack of context and meaning, the study said.

The report says AI tools can be “inaccurate, biased and discriminatory by design, relying on increasingly invasive forms of commercial surveillance.”

The Writers Guild of America strike hit the 100-day mark on Wednesday, Aug. 9, and the Guild and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers still appear to be far from reaching a labor agreement.

SAG-AFTRA, which represents about 160,000 media professionals, actors and entertainers, launched its own strike against AMPTP on July 14.