Welcoming the "Intel-ethicist"

Abstract

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Mélanie Terrasse, Moti Gorin, and Dominic Sisti, urge ethicists to devote scholarly attention to a wave of troubling artificial intelligence applications affecting health consumers' rights and the quality of their care. I very much agree. We already have neuroethicists, business ethicists, and genetics ethicists; AI-related systems in health care present more than enough warrant to herald the appearance of a new ethics specialist-the "intel-ethicist," let's say. Nonetheless, Terrasse and colleagues may have exaggerated some of the potential moral problems of AI. Examining only social media and e-health programs, the authors produce an impressive array of questions to consider, but I will argue that two of them are not nearly as worrisome as might be supposed.