The Doctor and the Algorithm

Abstract

The Doctor and the Algorithm combines insights from science and technology studies, critical algorithm studies, and public interest informatics to better understand how health artificial intelligence (AI) is made, promoted, regulated, and justified. It reviews the enthusiastic promises of health AI marketing communication and medical futurism as well as concerns about the dangerous and inequitable effects of AI that have been raised in critical algorithm studies and bioethics. In so doing, The Doctor and the Algorithm investigates promising new applications for health AI, as well as how these new technologies can replicate human biases under a veneer of objectivity and lead to considerable harms. The book also leverages AI, itself, to investigate the foundations of machine-learning technologies and the use of promotional language in health AI research. Along the way, it explores both how the overly enthusiastic embrace of health AI can lead to unintended consequences for patients and public health and how new initiatives in ethical and just AI can support better futures for algorithmic medicine. The Doctor and the Algorithm closes with recommendations for practices and frameworks that can support these more ethical and just approaches to health AI.