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Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are transforming clinical practice. There is a need for tailored education for end users and a need for more primary care stakeholder engagement during development and testing of AI-driven tools. An in-depth or technical understanding of AI is not required for clinicians to be able to make meaningful contributions to AI-related initiatives; however, most existing AI education resources focus on methods or are not specific to primary care. This primer is divided into 4 sections with the goal to fill this gap and support brainstorming and early-stage interdisciplinary research team discussions about potential uses and applications of AI for clinical practice and research. A secondary purpose is for this primer to serve as an introductory resource on AI for primary care stakeholders.
Section 1 introduces AI and machine learning; section 2 describes 3 main types of tasks that AI methods are currently capable of performing, with examples of primary care applications; section 3 touches on specialized techniques that might be needed to perform tasks with language and image data; and section 4 mentions earlier approaches to AI, before large data sources were available.