Artifical intelligence in surgery: ethical considerations in the light of social trends in the perception of health and medicine

Abstract

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine and surgery is currently predicted to be very promising. However, AI has the potential to change the doctor’s role and the doctor–patient relationship. It has the potential to support people’s desires for health, along with the potential to nudge or push people to behave in a certain way. To understand these potentials, we must see AI in the light of social developments that have brought about changes in how medicine’s role, in a given society, is understood. The trends of ‘privatisation of medicine’ and ‘public-healthisation of the private’ are proposed as a contextual backdrop to explain why AI raises ethical concerns different from those previously caused by new medical technologies, and which therefore need to be addressed specifically for AI.