Preferences for Artificial Intelligence Clinicians Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Discrete Choice Experiment and Propensity Score Matching Study.

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) methods can potentially be used to relieve the pressure that the COVID-19 pandemic has exerted on public health. In cases of medical resource shortages caused by the pandemic, changes in people's preferences for AI clinicians and traditional clinicians are worth exploring.

Objective: We aimed to quantify and compare people's preferences for AI clinicians and traditional clinicians before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to assess whether people's preferences were affected by the pressure of pandemic.