Article Summary by Peter David Winter and Annamaria Carusi
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a powerful and prominent tool in medical research, but its acceptance in hospitals remains low due to the lack of transparency associated with these technologies. This article examines how including clinicians and clinical scientists in the collaborative practices of AI developers de-troubles transparency in the development of AI for the early diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension. The close collaboration results in an AI application that is at once social and technological. We suggest that AI applications would be better developed and implemented if they were reframed as forms of sociotechnical intelligence.
Read the full article on the Medical Humanities journal website.
Peter Winter is a sociologist of science and technology and research associate at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. Peter specialises in the analysis of complex sociotechnical systems, particularly sociotechnical systems involving Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications. He is particularly interested in the challenges of developing, integrating and implementing AI technologies for use in real-world contexts (e.g., the role of regulation, trust and transparency) as well as its effects on professional practice and organisational structure.
Annamaria Carusi is Director of Interchange Research, a consultancy that bridges between humanities and social science approaches to understanding scientific practices, and the management of science and policy. She has extensive experience of supporting collaboration and interdisciplinarity in the biosciences and in chemicals regulation and policy. Her work has been commissioned by the European Commission Joint Research Centre, as well as the Wellcome. She is author of several publications and reports, including BeAMS (Bridging Across Methods in the BioSciences) Science for Policy Report. She is also Honorary Research Associate of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London. A philosopher of science and technology by background, her prior academic work combined philosophical and STS approaches to studies of technology mediation in the biosciences and in medical sciences. Her research has encompassed studies of scientific visualisation and images, the construction of computational models, and artificial intelligence for use in healthcare settings.