Ethical Dimensions of Using Artificial Intelligence in Health Care

Abstract

An artificially intelligent computer program can now diagnose skin cancer more accurately than a board-certified dermatologist. 1 Better yet, the program can do it faster and more efficiently, requiring a training data set rather than a decade of expensive and labor-intensive medical education. While it might appear that it is only a matter of time before physicians are rendered obsolete by this type of technology, a closer look at the role this technology can play in the delivery of health care is warranted to appreciate its current strengths, limitations, and ethical complexities.Artificial intelligence (AI), which includes the fields of machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics, can be applied to almost any field in medicine, 2 and its potential contributions to biomedical research, medical education, and delivery of health care seem limitless. With its robust ability to integrate and learn from large sets of clinical data, AI can serve roles in diagnosis, 3 clinical decision making, 4 and personalized medicine. 5 For example, AI-based diagnostic algorithms applied to mammograms are assisting in the detection of breast cancer, serving as a "second opinion" for radiologists. 6 In addition, advanced virtual human avatars are capable of engaging in meaningful conversations, which has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disease. 7 AI applications also extend into the physical realm with robotic prostheses, physical task support systems, and mobile manipulators assisting in the delivery of telemedicine. 8

Modeling the Research Landscapes of Artificial Intelligence Applications in Diabetes (GAPRESEARCH)

“…The increasingly deeper integration of AI applications in the diagnosis, management, and prediction of diabetes has also come with challenges. Ethical issues, in particular the privacy and confidentiality of patient data, have been a topic of debate in existing literature [26]. It is noted that most of the AI technology is still under development and not yet utilized in clinical practice.…”

Modeling Research Topics for Artificial Intelligence Applications in Medicine: Latent Dirichlet Allocation Application Study

“…Finally, AI will certainly be applied more in the health care system in the future owing to its advantages over the traditional decision-making process. On the other hand, the fact that users do not know how the results are analyzed by the “black box” algorithms, ethnic differences in validity of facial recognition technology for genetic diagnosis, medical and behavioral conditions [51,52], and ethnic bias in training data set [53] raise questions about product liability, privacy and data protection, and ethical and legal issues [51]. Thus, researchers have voiced their concern about legacy and ethical guidelines that are lagging behind the development of AI in health care and medicine [51].…”

Using AI-Enhanced Social Robots to Improve Children’s Healthcare Experiences

“…For social robots, in particular, an important consideration is determining the social role that the robot should play [23], as well as an ethical and appropriate means of making the capabilities of the robot clear. Most existing literature on ethical aspects of AI in the healthcare setting often focuses on AI diagnosis tools [21].…”