The Environmental Costs of Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare

Abstract

Healthcare has emerged as a key setting where expectations are rising for the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI), encompassing a range of technologies of varying utility and benefit. This paper argues that, even as the development of AI for healthcare has been pushed forward by a range of public and private actors, insufficient attention has been paid to a key contradiction at the center of AI for healthcare: that its pursuit to improve health is necessarily accompanied by environmental costs which pose risks to human and environmental health—costs which are not necessarily directly borne by those benefiting from the technologies. This perspective paper begins by examining the purported promise of AI in healthcare, contrasting this with the environmental costs which arise across the AI lifecycle, to highlight this contradiction inherent in the pursuit of AI. Its advancement—including in healthcare—is often described through deterministic language that presents it as inevitable. Yet, this paper argues that there is need for recognition of the environmental harm which this pursuit can lead to. Given recent initiatives to incorporate stakeholder involvement into decision-making around AI, the paper closes with a call for an expanded conception of stakeholders in AI for healthcare, to include consideration of those who may be indirectly affected by its development and deployment.