By Giorgia Pozzi. The hype about the promises of machine learning (ML) systems in medicine is real, even though not always justified. As ethicists have been increasingly pointing out in the past years, quite some work still needs to be done to ensure their responsible use and safeguard fundamental bioethical principles, such as justice and […]
Category: Artificial intelligence
It takes a village to build a good algorithm – particularly in a field as sensitive as patient preferences
By Nikola Biller-Andorno, Andrea Ferrario, Sophie Gloeckler Recently, there has been a lot of talk about how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to boost personalized medicine. And, indeed, the field is developing with amazing speed: Digital twins help predict treatment outcomes based on genomic data, AIs can automatically classify lesions from images of the skin […]
Three observations about justifying AI
By Anantharaman Muralidharan, G Owen Schaefer, Julian Savulescu. Consider the following kind of medical AI. It consists of 2 parts. The first part consists of a core deep machine learning algorithm. These blackbox algorithms may be more accurate than human judgment or interpretable algorithms, but are notoriously opaque in terms of telling us on what […]
Meeting the challenges of using automated second opinions
By Hendrik Kempt and Saskia K. Nagel. Diagnostics is a difficult inferential process requiring an immense amount of cognitive labor. Not only must physicians gather evidence and evaluate that evidence to fit the symptoms of a patient, they usually need to do that with imperfect knowledge in an ever changing field of research, and limited […]
Demystifying a part of the Wild West of healthcare AI
By Jordan Joseph Wadden. The pace at which we can see technological developments in healthcare is truly amazing. Sometimes it almost seems like technology is moving too fast, which raises some familiar concerns about patient safety, job security, and sometimes even what it means to be human. One of the fastest growing uses of technology […]
Up close and personal: Using AI to predict patient preferences?
By Nikola Biller-Andorno. Have you ever tried to put together a ballpoint pen that has fallen apart? Or, more ambitiously, tried to repair your child’s programmable toy robot that continues to bump into walls? There is nothing like building, taking apart and rebuilding to understand a gadget or system’s flaws and weaknesses. This is what […]
Is the conceptualisation of trust in NHS’ code of conduct for artificial intelligence problematic?
By Soogeun S Lee. In 2018, the UK government published a Code of Conduct, hereafter the Code, for using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the NHS. The Code contains ten principles that outline a gold-standard of ethical conduct of AI developers and implementers within the NHS. Considering the importance of trust in traditional medical practice, […]
AI in healthcare – why start a conversation with the general public?
By Elizabeth Ford Imagine the future. Imagine you are 76 years old. You visit your doctor to have her examine your knee, which hurts since you fell over yesterday, tripping on your front step. After tapping some information into her computer, your doctor turns to you and says, “Would you like to discuss any concerns […]
Towards meaningful human control. Using artificial intelligence in clinical decision making
By Matthias Braun, Patrik Hummel, Susanne Beck, Peter Dabrock Clinical decision-making can be challenging. The subject matter is complex. Decisions can have incisive, long-lasting consequences. There is imperfect evidence and informational asymmetries between those involved. Time constraints and economic restrictions complicate the process further. In view of difficulties like these, it is tempting to deploy […]
Westworld, ethics and maltreating robots
By Colin Gavaghan and Mike King This week saw the return, for a third season, of the critically acclaimed HBO series Westworld. WW’s central premise in its first 2 seasons was a theme park, sometime in the near future, populated by highly realistic robots or ‘hosts’. Human guests can pay exorbitant sums to interact with […]