A New Hope in the Fight Against Antimicrobial Resistance with Artificial Intelligence

Recent years have witnessed the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) management, implying a positive signal in the fight against antibiotic-resistant microbes. The impact of AI starts with data collection and preparation for deploying AI-driven systems, which can lay the foundation for some effective infection control strategies. Primary applications of AI include identifying potential antimicrobial molecules, rapidly testing antimicrobial susceptibility, and optimizing antibiotic combinations. Aside from their outstanding effectiveness, these applications also express high potential in narrowing the burden gap of AMR among different settings around the world. Despite these benefits, the interpretability of AI-based systems or models remains vague. Attempts to address this issue had led to two novel explanation techniques, but none have shown enough robustness or comprehensiveness to be widely applied in AI and AMR control. A multidisciplinary collaboration between the medical field and advanced technology is therefore needed to partially manage this situation and improve the AI systems’ performance and their effectiveness against drug-resistant pathogens, in addition to multiple equity actions for mitigating the failure risks of AI due to a global-scale equity gap.